If this be so,--and surely it will not be doubted,--then is it our duty to regulate our habits so as to cultivate all the faculties, to the end that Time shall yield its choicest fruits. When I speak of all the faculties, I mean all those which enter into and form the character created in the image of God, not merely those which minister to the selfish ends of life. There are faculties for business; there are others which open to us the avenues of knowledge,--others which connect us by chains soft as silk, but strong as iron, to the social and domestic circle,--others still which reveal to us, in vistas of infinite variety and inconceivable extension, our duties to God and man. Nor can any one reasonably persuade himself that he has done his whole duty, and employed his time to the best purpose, who has neglected any of these, although he may have sacrificed much to the others. Success in business will not compensate for neglect of general culture; nor will attendance on "the stated preaching of the gospel" atone for a want of interest in the great charities of life, in the education of the people, in the sufferings of the poor, in the sorrows of the slave. There is a tendency to absorption by one pursuit or one idea, against which we must especially guard. The mere man of business is "a man of one idea,"[141] and his solitary idea has its root in no generous or humane desires, but in selfishness. He lives for himself alone. He may send his freights to the most distant quarters of the earth, and receive therefrom returning argosies, but his real horizon is restricted to the narrow circle of his own personal interests; nor does his worldly nature, elated by the profits of cent per cent, see with eye of sympathy, in cotton sold or sugar bought, the drops of blood falling from the unhappy slaves out of whose labor they were wrung. In the mere man of business the individual is lost in the profession or calling, thinking only of that, and caring little for other things of life. He is known by the character that business impresses upon him. He is untiring in its pursuit, but with no true progress, for each day renews its predecessor. Benevolence calls, but he is deaf, or satisfies his conscience by a dole of money. Literature exhibits her charms, but he is insensible. And innocent recreation makes her pleasant appeal, but he will not listen. He is absorbed, engrossed, filled in every vein by the "one idea" of business with new methods of adding to his increasing gains, as the mouth of the money-seeking Crassus was filled by the Parthians with molten gold. [141] At the date of this Lecture the Abolitionist was constantly taunted, especially by business men, as "the man of one idea."