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V.
A SERMON OF THE MORAL DANGERS INCIDENT TO PROSPERITY.—PREACHED AT THE MUSIC HALL, IN BOSTON, ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1854.
“Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.”—Psalm lv. 19.
This morning I ask your attention to “A Sermon of
the Moral Dangers which are Incident to a State of
long-continued Prosperity.”
By prosperity, I mean the present success of schemes
which we form for our material purposes. The ambitious
man wants power; the acquisitive, money; the vain,
admiration; the nation wants numbers, riches, wide territory,
commercial and military power. When they succeed
in these desires, they attain prosperity. It is the effect of
this condition of success on the formation of a moral
character which I ask you to consider.
The human race does not thrive very well under circumstances where Nature does too much for us: man becomes
an animal, or a plant; not also to the same extent a spirit,
with the power to do, to be, and to suffer what becomes a man.
In physical geography, there are two extremes equally
unfavourable for the higher development of man; namely,
the equatorial region, where Nature does too much; and
the polar region, where she does too little. No high
civilization adorns the equatorial day; none such blooms
in the polar night. And so there are two analogous
extremes in the geography of human condition;—polar
