Page:Self-help with illustrations of conduct and perseverance (IA selfhelpwithillu00smiliala).pdf/408

 hands; he remains morally and spiritually asleep; and his position in society is often no higher than that of a polypus over which the tide floats.

Yet the rich man, inspired by a right spirit will spurn idleness as unmanly; and if he bethink himself of the responsibilities which attach to the possession of wealth and property he will feel even a higher call to work than men of humbler lot. This, however, must be admitted to be by no means the practice of life. The golden mean of Agur's perfect prayer is, perhaps, the best lot of all, did we but know it: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." The late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., left a fine motto to be recorded upon his monument in the Peel Park at Manchester,—the declaration in his case being strictly true: "My richness consisted not in the greatness of my possessions, but in the smallness of my wants." He rose from the humblest station, that of a factory boy, to an eminent position of usefulness, by the simple exercise of homely honesty, industry, punctuality, and self-denial. Down to the close of his life, when not attending Parliament, he did duty as minister in a small chapel in Manchester to which he was attached; and in all things he made it appear, to those who knew him in private life, that the glory he sought was not "to be seen of men," or to excite their praise, but to earn the consciousness of discharging the every-day duties of life, down to the smallest and humblest of them, in an honest, upright, truthful, and loving spirit.

"Respectability," in its best sense, is good. The