“ACTION! That’s the word.  The great world itself throbs with life.  Action, untiring harmony pervades the Universe of God.  The Creative Power has so ordained it.  The physical formation of the world, and all therein, forbids inactivity.  The vast machinery must move, or the whole cease to exist.  Man was never designed to be a drone.  Had he lived pure in the first Paradise, he could not have been idle.  Sick or well, in cold or heat, day or night, he machine moves on, the heart, like a steam-engine, throbs away, and faithfully pumps its crimson currents unceasingly to every part of the animal frame.  Action is one of the first elements of health and happiness.  The mind will stagnate and engender moral miasma, as much as the pool never stirred by a tide or swept by the winds.

“God has written action on the Heavens.  Silent, but ceaseless, the worlds that gleam out upon us, keep on their course.  Every orb follows the track marked out for it.  The Ocean rolls and heaves.  The spring gushes out from the hill-side and dances from rock to rock, and the brook hums and murmurs its melody as it goes.  Upon the meadow, the springing grass tells of the process that annually clothes the turf with wealth and beauty.  The leaves put out, rustle in the winds, and fall to their rest, while others follow.  The fierce, fiery energy of the lightning writes the truth upon the scudding clouds.  The formless waves that in the atmosphere ripple and dash against the cheek, tell of a restless ocean around us, a medium of health and sound.  From the world that rolls, to the summer flies that float on the air and glance in the sun, the truth is proclaimed that all is activity.  Man cannot be idle—­should not."[3]

[Footnote 3:  T.W.  Brown.]

“One of the most mischievous phrases in which a rotten Morality, a radically false and vicious Public Sentiment, disguise themselves, is that which characterizes certain individuals as destitute of financial capacity.  A ‘kind, amiable, generous, good sort of man,’ (so runs the varnish,) ’but utterly unqualified for the management of his own finances’—­’a mere child in everything relating to money,’ &c. &c.—­meaning that with an income of $500 a year, he persisted in spending $1000; or with an income of from $2000 to $3000, he regularly spent from $5000 to $8000, according to his ability to run in debt, or the credulity of others in trusting him.

“The victims of this immorality—­debtor as well as creditor—­are entitled to more faithful dealing at the hands of those not directly affected by the misdemeanors of the former.  It is the duty of the community to rebuke and repress these pernicious glosses, making the truth heard and felt, that inordinate expenditure is knavery and crime.  No man has a moral right thus to lavish on his own appetites, money which he has not earned, and does not really need.  If public opinion were sound on this subject—­if a man living beyond his means, when his means were commensurate with his real needs, were subjected to the reprehension he deserves—­the evil would be instantly checked, and ultimately eradicated.