"We are blessed to live in a rich country, but as I was reading a piece by William Ellery Channing, he was challenging the people of his day to look more closely at that prosperity. 

  "You talk of prosperity of your city. I know but one true prosperity. Does the human soul grow and prosper here? Do not point me to your thronged streets. I ask, Who throng them? Is it a low-minded, self-seeking, gold-worshiping, man-despising crowd, which I see rushing through them? Do I meet in them, under the female form, the gaily decked prostitute, or the idle, wasteful, aimless, profitless woman of fashion? Do I meet the young man showing off his pretty person as the perfection  of nature's works, wasting his golden hours in dissipation and sloth, and bearing in his countenance and gaze, the marks of a profligate? Do I meet a grasping multitude, seeking to thrive by concealments and frauds? An anxious multitude, driven by fear of want to doubtful means of gain? An unfeeling multitude, caring nothing for others, if they may themselves prosper or enjoy? In the neighborhood of your comfortable or splendid dwellings are there abodes of squalid misery, of reckless crime, of bestial intemperance, of half-famished childhood, or profaneness, of dissoluteness, of temptation for thoughtless youth? And are these multiplying with your prosperity, and outstripping and neutralizing the influences of truth, and virtue? Then your prosperity is a vain show."