CHAP. I. Foundation of Duty. 5 ened with the illness he was sure to contract by visiting the fevered and the dying. He replied to his friends with firmness and simplicity, "I look after my business for the sake of my wife and my children, but I hold that a man's duty to society requires him to have a care for those who are not of his own household." These were the words of a willing servant to duty. It is not the man who gives his money that is the true benefactor of his kind, but the man who gives himself. The man who gives his money is advertised; the man who gives his time, strength, and soul, is beloved. The one may be remembered, while the other may be forgotten, though the good influence he has sown will never die. But what is the foundation of Duty? Jules Simon has written a valuable work, Le Devoir, in which he makes duty depend upon liberty. Men must be free in order to perform their public duties, as well as to build up their individual character. They are free to think; they must also be free to act. At the same time liberty may be used to do evil rather than to do good. The tyranny of a multitude is worse than the tyranny of an individual. Thoreau, the American, says that modern freedom is only the exchange of the slavery of feudality for the slavery of opinion. Freedom, enjoyed by all men alike, is a late idea in history.* In remote ages, men who were so-called "free" possessed the right of being served by slaves. There was * The feeling that labour is not an honourable occupation is but a survival of the old pagan and feudal times, when the plough was left to the slaves, and only the villeins hoed the corn. The Roman definition of gentility was gentem habent soli cujus parentes nemini servierunt— "those only are genteel whose ancestors have never served." The idea prevalent in the North American Republic, according to which slave blood, in even the extremest branch contaminates, is decidedly of Roman origin. "Dear German peasants," says Heine, "go to America; there slavery in the state, and also in the family. It existed in republics as well as in monarchies. The elder Cato, the greatest economist of Republican Rome, enforced the expediency of getting rid of old slaves to avoid the burden of their maintenance. The sick and infirm slaves were carried to the island of Esculapius, in the Tiber, where they were suffered to die of disease or of hunger. In Imperial Rome, the Populus Romanus was dependent upon charity. In England also, when slavery was abolished, and when the poor were no longer fed by the charity of the monasteries, a poor law was established, which was only a compensation for the loss of liberty. There is a stronger word than Liberty, and that is Conscience. From the beginning of civilisation the power of this word has been acknowledged. Menander, the Greek poet, who lived three hundred years before Christ, duly recognised it. "In our own breast," he said, "we have a god-our conscience." Again he says, ""Tis not to live, to live for self alone. Whenever you do what is holy, be of good cheer, knowing that God himself takes part with rightful courage. The rich heart is the great thing that man wants." Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct. It first reveals itself when we become aware of the strife between a higher and a lower nature within us-of spirit warring against flesh-of you will find neither princes nor nobles; all men are equals, with the exception, in truth, of a few millions who have a black or a brown skin, and are treated like dogs. He who has the least trace of negro descent, and betrays his origin no longer in colour, but in the form of his features, is forced to suffer the greatest humiliations. . . . Doubtless many a noble heart may there in silence lament the universal self-seeking and unrighteousness. Would he, however, strive against it, a martyrdom awaits him which surpasses all European conception." CHAP. 1. Law of Religion. 7 good striving for the mastery over evil. Look where you will, in the church or without the church, the same struggle is always going on-war for life or death; men and women wrung with pain because they love the good and cannot yet attain it. It is out of this experience that Religion is born-the higher-law leading us up to One whom the law of conscience represents. “It is an introspection," says Canon Mozley, "on which all religion has been built. Man going into himself and seeing the struggle within him, and thence getting self-knowledge, and thence the knowledge of God." Under this influence man knows and feels what is right and wrong. He has the choice between good and evil. And because he is free to choose, he is responsible. Whatever men may theoretically believe, none practi cally feel that their actions are necessary and inevitable. There is no constraint upon our volition. We know that we are not compelled, as by a spell, to obey any particular motive. "We feel," says John Stuart Mill, that if we wished to prove that we have the power of resisting the motive, we could do so; and it would be humiliating to our pride, and paralysing to our desire of excellence, if we thought otherwise." Our actions are controllable, else why do men all over the world enact laws? They are enacted in order to be obeyed, because it is the universal belief, as it is the universal fact, that men obey them or not, very much as they determine. We feel, each one of us, that our habits and temptations are not our masters, but we of them. Even in yielding to them we know that we could resist, and that, were we desirous of throwing them off altogether, there could not be required for that purpose a stronger desire or will than we know ourselves to be capable of feeling. To enjoy spiritual freedom of the highest kind, the mind must have been awakened by knowledge. As the mind has become enlightened, and conscience shows its power, the responsibility of man increases. He submits. himself to the influence of the Supreme Will, and acts in conformity with it-not by constraint, but cheerfully; and the law which holds him is that of Love. In the act of belief, implying knowledge and confidence, his humanity unfolds. He feels that by his own free act, his faith in and his working in conformity to the purpose of a Divine Will, he is achieving good, and securing the highest good. "Man without religion," says Archdeacon Hare, “is the creature of circumstances; but religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them." And Thomas Lynch, in his Theophilus Trinal, says, "Till fixed, we are not free. The acorn must be earthed ere the oak will develop. The man of faith is the man who has taken root-taken root in God; our works prove our heart-our heart in God." In the New Testament we find, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And Cowper: "He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, Where there is no such acknowledgment of Divine law, men act in obedience to sense, to passion, to selfishness. In indulging any vicious propensity, they know they are doing wrong. Their conscience condemns them. The law of nature cries out against them. They know that their act has been wilful and sinful. But their power to resist in the future has become weakened. Their will has lost power; and next time the temptation offers, the resistance will be less. Then the habit is formed. The curse of every evil deed is, that, propagating still, it brings forth evil. CHAP. I. Universality of Conscience. 9 But conscience is not dead. We cannot dig a grave for it, and tell it to lie there. We may trample it under foot, but it still lives. Every sin or crime has, at the moment We cannot "Thus con of its perpetration, its own avenging angel. blind our eyes to it, or stop our ears to it. science does make cowards of us all." There comes a day of judgment, even in this world, when it stands up. confronting us, and warning us to return to the life of well-doing. It is the very Conscience is permanent and universal. essence of individual character. It gives a man self-control -the power of resisting temptations and defying them. Every man is bound to develop his individuality, to endeavour to find the right way of life, and to walk in it. He has the will to do so: he has the power to be himself and not the echo of somebody else, nor the reflection of lower conditions, nor the spirit of current conventions. True manhood comes from self-control-from subjection of the lower powers to the higher conditions of our being. The only comprehensive and sustained exercise of selfcontrol is to be attained through the ascendency of conscience-in the sense of duty performed. It is conscience alone which sets a man on his feet, frees him from the dominions of his own passions and propensities. It places him in relation to the best interests of his kind. The truest source of enjoyment is found in the paths of duty alone. Enjoyment will come as the unbidden sweetener of labour, and crown every right work. At its fullest growth, conscience bids men do whatever makes them happy in the highest sense, and forbear doing whatever makes them unhappy. "There are few if any among civilised people," says Herbert Spencer, "who do not agree that human well-being is in accordance with the |