OCR Text |
Show USE AND ABUSE OF BLESSINGS. 319 ings, for his mind is continually upon i t ; he is in such a hurry in the morning to go out to hunt his stock, that he has no time to pray; when he returns home late at night, worn out with toil and anxiety of mind, he is unfit to pray; his cattle are lost, his mind is unhinged and darkened through the neglect of his duty, and apostacy stares him in the face, for he is not satisfied with himself, and murmurs against his brethren, and against his God. By and by some of his cattle turn up with a strange brand upon them ; they have been taken up, and sold to this person or that one. This brings contention and dissatisfaction between neighbor and neighbor. Such a person has too much property, more than he knows what to do with. It would be much better for a man who is a mechanic, and intends to follow his business, to give one out of two cattle which he may possess, to some person, for taking care of the other. It would be better for those who possess a great quantity of stock, to sell half of them to fence in a piece of land, to secure the other half, than to drive them all out to run at large, and lose three-fourths of them. If there are half-a-dozen men round me, and I can put a cow in their way or anything else that will do them any good, for fencing up a lot for me, the property I thus pay is not out of the world, but is turned over to those men who had not a mouthful of meat, butter, or milk; it is doing them good, and I am reaping the profit and benefit of their labors in exchange. If I did not do this, I must either see them suffer, or make a free distribution of a part of what I have among them. It is impossible for me to tell you how much a man must possess to entitle him to the liberty of wasting anything, or of letting it be stolen and run away with by |