I.
"As a nail sticketh fast between the joinings of the stones; so doth sin stick close between buying and selling."—Eccles. xxvii. 2.
I ask your attention to a "Sermon of Merchants: their Position, Temptations, Opportunities, Influence, and Duty." For the present purpose, men may be distributed into four classes.
I. Men who create new material for human use, either by digging it out of mines and quarries, fishing it out of the sea, or raising it out of the land. These are direct producers.
II. Men who apply their head and hands to this material, and transform it into other shapes, fitting it for human use; men that make grain into flour and bread, cotton into cloth, iron into needles or knives, and the like. These are indirect producers; they create not the material, but its fitness, use, or beauty. They are manufacturers.
III. Men who simply use these things, when thus produced and manufactured. They are consumers.
IV. Men who buy and sell : who buy to sell, and sell to buy the more. They fetch and carry between the other classes. These are distributors; they are the merchants. Under this name I include the whole class who live by buying and selling, and not merely those conventionally called merchants, to distinguish them from small dealers. This term comprises traders behind counters and traders behind desks; traders neither behind counters nor desks.
There are various grades of merchants. They might be
