found it, and will follow it! How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an everdeepening river there, it runs and flows, draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade, making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream."-Carlyle.

The Ethics of the Vocation: To have a vocation of some sort is held to be necessary. Even princes are taught a trade by which they can earn a livelihood, if need be.

One's vocation is in accord with moral law when that which is produced by the practice of it is for the good of man; and it is contra to moral law when harmful to man's physical or moral constitution. The chief use of tobacco is for chewing and smoking; and of whiskey is for drink. These uses in general are very detrimental. These habits are not only injurious to man, but they are expensive. The manufacture and sale, then, of these articles for the purposes named is labor worse than useless; and to engage in it as a vocation is to follow a calling that tends to degradation of character-to poverty and crime. It would be a vocation destitute of ethic character.

So whatever we do, the morality of it must be measured by its tendency to promote good or evil; and the moral character of the individual doer-whether capitalist or laborer-is measured by the extent of knowledge he has, or ought to have, of the effect he is producing as good or bad.

It becomes, then, the duty of each and all, well to consider the tendency, the moral tendency, of his vocation.

The Ethics of Habit: Were we perfect in morality, we should not need to look to habit as an auxiliary to virtue; but since the most sure-footed are liable to stumble, we need to cultivate a sure habit of erect carriage and firmness in our walk; namely, we need to be habitually on our guard against the seductive influences of vice, and thus we shall with ease resist temptation, because we have accustomed ourselves to do it. It has become a habit with us-a second nature--for us to say no, no, no to the overtures of the tempter.

There is no moral virtue in the habit itself; the moral virtue is in the man who has acquired the habit. The ethic-character, then, in our habits is in the formation and application of good habits as aids to virtue. If we neglect this watchfulness over our walk and conversation, we shall fall into and become

accustomed to bad habits. Pope forcibly expresses

it thus:

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

-Essay on Man.

"Crimes lead to crimes, and link so straight,
What first was accident, at last is fate,
The unhappy servant sinks into a slave,
And virtue's last sad strugglings cannot save."

-Mallet.

"Watch ye, and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." (Mark 14: 38.)

Temperance: "How blest the sparing meal and temperate bowl!" The advantage of temperance as a means of health is that everyone, the poor as well as the rich, can practice it at all times and in all places. It does not oblige us to spend time and money at Saratoga, the Hot Springs, Newport, and other resorts of health and pleasure seekers.

If labor gives necessary exercise to the bodily organs, and tends to cast out the refuse of material used in their growth, temperance tends to a minimum in the accumulation of what nature rejects, and so does not overtax her powers.

Exercise promotes circulation, but temperance gives free course to it, and thus there is force and vigor in it.

Every kind of animal save man is limited by its own nature in its range of food, and so is not liable to suffer from a surfeit; but man's constitution is adapted to very many kinds of food-to fish, flesh and the fruits of the earth; hence he has need to use discretion-to restrain his appetite, and to exercise the virtue of temperance in the use of food as to quality and quantity.

Temperance in eating and drinking and in everything promotes longevity. The intemperate are sure to shorten their days; temperance also promotes thrift, and adds value to every material kind of prosperity. But these are not the only or the chief advantages of temperance.

It affects the moral and religious interests of man;

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Duty, then, to those related to us-husband or wife, father, mother, child, friend, neighbor—all, requires that if we have the besetting sin of a faultfinding, hasty, peevish or ill-governed temper, we should at once set about to rectify and govern it.

Religion: Man is by nature religious, and is at times sensible that he is subject to and should be in accord with some supreme power known or unknown.

Seeing that he is the possessor of a religious nature, there arises then the question of duty: What shall be done with this possession? As the owner of houses, he feels bound to keep them in repair, and to collect the rents of lands; to cultivate them as best he can, to secure abundant harvests; and, in genetal, as a business man, to make wise arrangements

to foot up figures correctly, and balance his books. So also he readily sees the need and use of intellectual and moral cultivation for the attainment of a happy lite.

But it by nature religious, ought he not to apply

his trained rational and moral nature to the discovery of true religion, so that the entire man—the religious nature as well as the physical, intellectual and moral-shall be duly cultivated and developed?

There can be no question as to this obligation and duty when stated as an abstract proposition. The questioning arises when the method of discovery is considered. But the method, whether short or long, involves necessary and universal principles.

Time-the Ethics of Its Use: There are two views of the use of time, each having its own ethic-character. One relates to diligence in its use, the other to the quality of our employments. "Seize upon the present moment; trust little to the morrow,' is the injunction of Horace, while the "Course of Time" reads:

"Be wise today, 'tis madness to defer:

Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time."

"We all of us complain of the shortness of time," saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. "Our lives," says he, "are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. Though we seemed grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to