In gratifying the implanted desires of our nature, we are bound so to restrain ourselves, by reason and conscience, as always to seek the main objects of existence—the _highest_ good of ourselves and others; and never to sacrifice this for the mere gratification of our desires. We are to gratify appetite just so far as is consistent with health and usefulness, and the desire for knowledge just so far as will enable us to do most good by our influence and efforts, and no further. We are to seek social intercourse to that extent which will best promote domestic enjoyment and kindly feelings among neighbors and friends; and we are to pursue exercise and amusement only so far as will best sustain the vigor of body and mind. The laws of the Supreme Ruler, when he became the civil as well as the religious Head of the Jewish theocracy, furnish an example which it would be well for all attentively to consider when forming plans for the apportionment of time and property. To properly estimate this example, it must be borne in mind that the main object of God was to set an example of the _temporal_ rewards that follow obedience to the laws of the Creator, and at the same time to prepare religious teachers to extend the more enlarged views and duties resulting from the dangers of the future life revealed by Jesus Christ. Before Christ came, the Jews were not required to go forth to other nations as teachers of religion, nor were the Jewish nation led to obedience by motives of a life to come. To them God was revealed both as a Father and a civil ruler, and obedience to laws relating solely to this life was all that was required. So low were they in the scale of civilization and mental development, that a system which confined them to one spot as an agricultural people, and prevented their growing very rich or having extensive commerce with other nations, was indispensable to prevent their relapsing into the low idolatries and vices of the nations around them, while temporal rewards and penalties were more effective than those of a life to come. Such faith in God, his laws, and those temporal rewards and penalties as secured habitual obedience, were all that was required. The proportion of time and property which every Jew was required to devote to intellectual, benevolent, and religious purposes, was as follows: