It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.
The wage of a people has meaning only when it arises from production. Every increase in production should benefit the whole people and raise the people's standards of living.
It is our duty not to not only hold fast, but to hold forth the Word of life; not only to hold fast for our own benefit, but to hold it forth for the benefit of others, to hold it forth as the candlestick holds forth the candle, which makes it appear to advantage all around, or as the luminaries of the heavens, which shed their influences far and wide.
I hold it to be our duty to see that the wage-worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, shall get their fair share of business prosperity. But it either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from it.
When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift.
In your judgment virtue requires no reward, and is to be sought for itself, unaccompanied by external benefits.
[Lat., Judice te mercede caret, per seque petenda est
Externis virtus incomitata bonis.]