“We should each have a sermon to ourselves, and one every day of the week, if preaching is to balance its power against the other powers which act upon us. There is Jones, my host; he is always thinking about establishing his sons well in the world; that is his chief interest. As for his wife, she is taken up with making her husband comfortable and cherishing her babies.” “What sort of a sermon would you preach to them?” “I could only tell them what they feel already—that the pure in heart are blessed. If any pursuits are pure, theirs are; and if any people are blessed, they are this day, with their good, promising children about them, and love and comfort within their door. Then there are their neighbours, the Davisons; there pleasures are of a very different kind,—a glass of spirits each at the end of the day, and a debauch at the fair as often as they can get there. I would preach a very short sermon to them. I would send them trooping, bag and baggage, instead of letting them corrupt the morals and laugh at the sobriety of their neighbours, and waste the capital which they ought to employ for the good of society. The money they lay out in gin and gaming would stock a shop.” “And what sort of a sermon would you preach to me, Paul?” asked Armstrong, “and what is my chief interest?” “Your chief interest is yourself, and therefore my sermon would be a pretty severe one,” answered Paul. “But it is a harmless, good-natured self, so I would make allowance. But I can’t forgive your great sin against society.” “You mean my living by myself.” “Live where you please: but how do you justify it to yourself to share the benefits of society when you do nothing in return? You enjoy the fruits of the labour and capital of others,—you drink your tea from the East Indies and your coffee from the West; you read your newspaper, which is the production of a hundred brains and pairs of hands; you—” “But I pay for all I use.” “You do, because you could have nothing without; but not a single service do you render to society that you could avoid, while the means are hourly within your reach. Every man in society ought to belong to one class of producers or the other, or to stimulate production by useful though unproductive labour. You are not like the labourer who adds to his employer’s capital, nor yet like the capitalist who, assisted by the labourer, increases the resources of society; nor yet like the professional man who, by improving the social state, opens new demands for the comforts and pleasures of life. You would be a better citizen if you were a surgeon in the next town, or a partner in this concern, or the humblest labourer about the works.” “You would preach to me from the parable of the talents, I suppose?”