The spirit of industrial activity and commercial competition creates all these scenes, and as we trace them to their source we cannot help noticing the desire of acquisition, one of the original principles of human nature, which often and most generally kindles and keeps that spirit alive. The desire of gain, regulated by justice and generosity, is to be distinguished from that love of money which is so strongly reprobated in the best of books, as “the root of all evil;” but it cannot be denied that the innate acquisitiveness of man which may be trained up into a virtue is too apt to sink down into a vice. Influenced by a moral feeling, especially by those considerations which Christianity suggests, and by those precepts which Christianity enjoins, this principle prompts individuals to gather only that they may prudently appropriate a befitting portion, and generously distribute the rest; but apart from these checks and guides, and stimulated by the sordid passions of man’s fallen soul, the natural tendency to acquire, in a multitude of cases, degenerates into the sin of covetousness, which is idolatry, and he who makes haste to be rich becomes a worshipper of Mammon. Nor can we here omit to notice what a wonderful spring of human energy; what a motive to exertion has the material wealth of this world ever proved; how, perhaps, even beyond the highest prizes of warlike ambition, it has more frequently and continuously agitated the surface of society, and moved it from its lowest depths. It has been like a strong east wind sweeping over the world from the earliest ages, and keeping the sea of civilized life in constant commotion. As we read the history of commerce, and think of the mercantile cities of antiquity, Tyre, Corinth, Alexandria, and the rest—as we trace the stream onwards through the middle ages, by the way of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa;—as we descend to latter times, and touch on Amsterdam, Bruges, and Louvain, and then come home and muse on the rise and rivalry, the progress and changes of the great centres of commerce in our own country;—as we pause in each place to look at the busy traffic going on within them, to the crowded quays, the well-stored warehouses, the mart of the trader, the shop of the artisan;—as we see groups of merchants, mechanics, and mariners;—as we listen to the buzz of many lips, and the noise of unfurled sails, and vessels loosened from their moorings, the tramp of men piling up bales of goods, the click of the shuttle and clangour of the anvil, we have an impressive illustration of the high estimate of that material wealth, which it is the object of all this energetic activity to produce and preserve. Percival’s description of the pearl fishery at Ceylon—itself a branch of most profitable traffic, and exhibiting a scene of bustle akin to that of an oriental bazaar—may be regarded as a parable of the great world-mart we are thinking of, and of the precious prize which the thousands who throng it all covet to obtain. Several thousands of people of different colours, countries, casts, and occupations, continually passing and re-passing in a busy crowd: the vast numbers of small tents and huts erected on the shore, with the bazaar or market-place; the vast numbers of jewellers, brokers, merchants of all colours and all descriptions, both natives and foreigners, who are occupied in some way or other with the pearls, some separating and assorting them, others weighing and ascertaining their number and value, while others are hawking them about, or drilling and boring them for future use; “all these circumstances tend to impress the mind with the value and importance of _that object which can of itself create this scene_.” On reading this description it suggests another parable, a holy one from the holiest of lips. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls: who, when he hath found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”