+III. Our chief concern as patriots should be to promote the moral well-being of our nation.+ Those who uplift it in virtue are its true benefactors. All who minister to its material, intellectual, and artistic progress are worthy of gratitude; but most deserving of gratitude are those who inspire it with the fear of God, and with love for His laws. Hence, +IV. Our chief concern as individuals should be for the moral and not for the material.+ It is a very small matter to add house to house, and field to field: it is a very great thing to add virtue to virtue until we have succeeded in building up a symmetrical and noble moral character. A man's life--his true well-being depends not upon what he _has,_ but upon what he _is_.[1] And upon this, too, depends his eternal destiny. How childish, therefore, is the almost universal concern for mere material improvement! And how little have those to complain of who find themselves unable to accumulate wealth! The millionaire has soon to leave all his stores, and he speedily reaches a point at which all his bonds and notes become wastepaper. What a contrast between his experience, and that of the man who, having employed his life in virtue, finds that all unconsciously he has been laying all up for himself treasures in heaven! These two courses are open to us--to live for the material, or to live for the moral: which will you choose? FOOTNOTES: [1] A wise man looks upon men as he does upon horses; and considers their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, but as harness.--_Newton,_ 1725-1807. In the library of the world, men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, the size, and the binding. The time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.--_E. Cook._ A man may be outwardly successful all his life long, and die hollow and worthless as a puff-ball; and a man may be externally defeated all his life long, and die in the royalty of a kingdom established within him. That man is a pauper who has only outward success; and that man may be a prince who dies in rags, untended, and unknown in his physical relations to this world. And we ought to take the ideal in the beginning that a man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself: not in his dwelling; not in his position; not in his external relations, but in his own essential character. That is the realm in which a man must live, if he is to live as a Christian man.--_Beecher._ THE SINNER'S DANGER AND REFUGE. ii. 10. _Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty._