sheer thoughtlessness. The dullness or the length of a sermon is no excuse for bad manners. Sleeping in church is a terribly bad habit. Every person addicted to it should break it up. In Norway, according to Paul du Chaillu, they allow no sleepy hearers in church. In one of the pulpits he tells how he saw near the Bible on the pulpit what resembled a policeman's club, at the end of which was a thick piece of leather, the whole reminding one of a martinet. This was used, until very recently, to awake the sleepers, the parson striking the pulpit with it very forcibly, thus compelling attention. Near the pulpit was a long pole, rounded at the end, with which the sexton, it appears, used to poke the ribs of sleepers. These two implements, intended to keep the congregations awake, were once used extensively in Sweden also. The present substitute for them is a few pinches of strong snuff offered to the sleeper, who, after sneezing for a considerable time, finds his drowsiness entirely gone. Some such device is needed in America. Putting on overcoats, smoothing hats, adjusting shawls and furs during the doxology, and before the congregation is dismissed and the worship formally ended, as though in a hurry to get out of church, is a common and pernicious habit. Many persons who attend church for about two hours a week seek to cheat the Lord at both ends by coming late and going early; they are the first to rush for the door. The Shake hands with somebody as you go out of church. more of it the better, if it is expressive of real interest and feeling. There may be a great deal of the spirit of the gospel put into a hearty shake of the hand. Think of St. Paul's four times repeated request-"Greet one another"-after the custom then in common use, and one which is expressive of even warmer feeling than our common one of hand-shaking. Why not give your neighbors the benefit of the warm Christian feeling that fills you to your finger tips, and receive the like from them in return! You will both be benefited by it; and the stranger will go away feeling that the church is not, after all, so cold as he had thought it to be. The victory is most sure For him, who, seeking faith by virtue, strives Of Conscience: Conscience reverenced and obeyed And his most perfect Image in the world. Endeavor thus to live; these rules regard, These helps solicit; and a steadfast seat With only such degree of sadness left As may support longings of pure desire! And strengthen Love, rejoicing secretly In the sublime attractions of the grave.-WORDSWORTH. 278 MORAL LIFE. THE MORAL SENSE. THERE is in man a strong sense of obligation. He perceives himself related to other creatures around him, and he knows intuitively that he ought to do to those creatures as he wishes them to do by him. Inseparably associated with this fundamental sense of duty is the rule of obedience to legitimate authority. The place occupied by this instinctive sentiment in the equipment of our nature is, in the language of the Duke of Argyll, as obvious as it is important. The helplessness of infancy and of childhood is not greater than would be the helplessness of the race if the disposition to accept and to obey authority were wanting in us. It is implanted in our nature only because it is one of the first necessities of our life, and a fundamental condition of the development of our powers. All nature breathes the spirit of authority and is full of the exercise of command. "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not" are words continually on her lips, and all her injunctions and all her prohibitions are backed by the most tremendous sanctions. Moreover, the most tremendous of these sanctions are often those which are not audibly proclaimed, but those which come upon us most gradually, most imperceptibly, and after the longest lapse of time. Some of the most terrible diseases which afflict humanity are known to be the results of vice, and what has long been known of some of these diseases is more and more reasonably suspected of many others. The truth is, that we are born into a system of things in which every act carries with it, by indissoluble ties, a long train of consequences reaching to the most distant future, and which for the whole course of time affect our own condition, the condition of other men, and even the conditions of external nature. And yet we cannot see those consequences beyond the shortest way, and very often those which lie nearest are in the highest degree deceptive as an index to ultimate results. Neither pain nor pleasure can be accepted as a guide. With the lower animals, indeed, these, for the most part, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Appetite is all that the creature has, and in the gratification of it the highest law of the animal being is fulfilled. In man, too, appetite has its own indispensable function to discharge. But it is a lower function, and amounts to nothing more than that of furnishing to reason a few of the primary data on which it has to work-a few, and a few only. Physical pain is indeed one of the threatenings of natural authority; and physical pleasure is one of its rewards. But neither the one nor the other forms more than a mere fraction of that awful and imperial code under which we live. It is the code of an everlasting kingdom and of a jurisprudence which endures throughout all generations. It is a code which continually imposes on man the abandonment of pleasure and the endurance of pain, whenever and wherever the higher purposes of its law demand of him the sacrifice. Nor has this spirit of authority ever been without its witness in the human spirit, or its response in the human will. On the contrary, in all ages of the world, dark and distorted as have been his understandings of authority, man has been prone to acknowledge it, and to admit it as the basis of obligation and the rule of duty. This, at all events, is one side of his character, and it is universally recognized as the best. * * * We now perceive a marked difference between the moral nature and the intellectual nature of man. the work of reasoning, the perceptions which are primary and intuitive require to be worked out and elaborately applied, but in morals the perceptions which are primary are all in all. It is true that here also the applications may be infinite and the doctrines of utility have their legitimate application in enforcing, by the sense of obligation, whatever course of conduct reason may determine to be the most fitting and the best. The sense of obligation in itself is, like the sense of logical sequence, elementary, and, like it, is part and parcel of our mental constitution. But unlike the mere sense of logical sequence, the sense of moral obli In |