The freeman. (Fremont [Ohio]) 1849-1850, 1849-12-22
The rr.,e Object Of Life.


The true Object of Life.
The following beautiful extract is taken from
lecture on Leisure-its Uses and Abuses, foend in
the new voums of orations and discourses by the
Rev. Bethune, spoken of few days since:
Commerce or any pursuit which is usually cal
led business, is unworthy of being considered the
proper occupation of life. 1t is only necessary to
provide or to procure the means of living. The
time devoted to it should be considered as tax
upon our immortal being laid upon US by the neces-
sites of that curse which sin brought with it into
our world. If so the leisure which the necessities
of business allow becomes intellectually more pre-
cous, as being the only season when we can devote
ourselves mainly and exclusively to the great end
ofour being For though there is no honest pur-
suit oflife in which we may not serve God and our
fellow men, man is fitted for the practice of vr
tue merely by practice; he must in hours of rest,
study its theory, contemplate its ends and wisely
| gird himself for the toll.
If there be one here, Though l am sure there is
not) who has no higher ambition than to be mere
man of business, mere slave OF mems bodily
necessities, mere idolator of his own purse; to
have his life but thing of cotton bags and tobacco
hogsheads, druggets and dowasses, madder and
fustic town lots bank stocks, and exchanges, his
mind like the advertising side of a daily gazette
or the weekly Price Current; the sum of his life,
the balance sheet of his ledger; and who estimates
his worth by the dollars and cents which remain
to his credit who would choose for his immortality
one eternal Wall street, and give up crown OF
glory to be called the best man upon "change'-
if there be such an one, he may despise those mo-
ments ofleisure which business spares, waste them
in sinful sleep, lounge them away in rapid amuse-
ments, dawdle ephemera magazines, or news
paper reports of police causes and shocking acci
Ela in tha 1Oyv of
exhaust his breath in blowing up every bubble Of
popular exctementsp idle gallantres in ladies ears
who in their soul despise such emptiness, and but
tolerate the fool as they do apet dog or parrot
for want of better company or perhaps do worse
in vulgar debaucheries. He may despise leisure
and SO waste it, but he must take the consequence
in this world and the next A mere merchant! {
mere man of business! Who would be content with
such designation? what respect can one feel fol
sucha character? All he gets from the world is thu
credit of being worth so much dross, little fawn
ing serrility from those who wish to borrow of hin
or him already or the wondering calculation
of how much his heirs will divide among them wher
he leaves his wealth behind him with his rotting
body Were | such man. | would wish my
name to die with me, and would ask neither mar
BILE nor granite nor the venal page, to preserve
the memory of my sordid sellishness Let it persl
like the thistle cut down by the mowers scythe, o
the dry mullen that decays on the barren bill side
But there is a true grandeur, which though We
cannot REACH we must admire and may emulate
in him who devotes the energies of well storet
mind to the pursuit of commerce, that the fruit:
of noble enterprise may enable him to follow th
bent of his disposition in the spread of knowledge
and the liberalities of wide philanthropy; whit
can shake off the meaner jealousies of trade witt
the dust of his warehouse; who leaves behind hin
the idoIatries of covetousness well pleased to ente
the populous solitude of his library and hold com
; munion with the mighty dead to join the socia
circle and brighten the glow Of cheerful but ration
al converse by the warmth of his own intelligence
or to minge with the evening crowd who meet Il
devise and prosecute new plans for doing good t.
his countrymen and the world; whose walls ar
adorned with works of native art. acquired by
price which has cheered the child of genius in hi
lone enthusiasm at whose table and hearthstone th
scholar and the man of sience is welcome and de
lighted guest, and whom religion claims as he
consistent and benefcent follower. Like nob
tree, whose roots struck deep in fruitful earth
f he stands in gigantic strength, his higher arm
, aspiring to heaven, while the poor, the sorrowful
and the friendless find shelter and food beneath
the shadow of his wide branches.