gation has one necessary and primary application, which from the earliest moment of man's existence may well have been all-sufficient. Obedience to the will of legitimate authority is the first duty and the first idea of duty in the mind of every child. These elementary conceptions go together, and constitute in universal man the moral sense.

The feeling of obedience to legitimate authority is inseparably associated with the fact that all men are born helpless, absolutely dependent and subject to parents. The feeling of obligation is similarly founded on our conscious community of nature with other men, and on the consequent universal applicability to them of our estimates of good and evil.

WILL-POWER.

"He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself." Such was the observation of Goethe, and is it not true? The men who have turned the tide of nations and moulded the destinies of large communities of their fellows have been men of iron wills. Such was Napoleon and Cromwell and Frederick the Great. Such was our own Washington and Jackson and Scott and Grant. Fairness of temper and intensity of will have distinguished most of the world's great heroes. Invincible resolution is the steppingstone to achievement.

"Few men," says Bishop Edward Thompson, "properly estimate the power of the will; we need more of the philosophy of it. Of the philosophy of the body, intellect and the sensibilities we have enough. Of the philosophy of the will we have not. Men exert not their full power because not conscious of it. There was a time when, in the British Islands, duels and assassinations occurred almost daily. Men said it was not possible to avoid them; they laughed at the idea of dispensing with them; they said that human passions could not be controlled. By and by the law of civilization came and made duels and assassinations punishable with chains and prison and death. Now, though there are millions where there were but thousands, duels or assassinations are scarce heard of. In Italy a certain form of insanity, termi

nating with suicide, spread among the ladies like a contagion. A decree went forth that the corpse of the suicide should be exposed upon the highway to the derision of the multitude. There were no more lady-like suicides after that.

"Boerhaave found epilepsy spreading like a pestilence through the hospital of which he had charge; remedy after remedy was used in vain. At length he announced a new plan of treatmentnamely, the application of a red-hot poker to the spine. Fires were kindled in all the wards and the pokers were kept heated, but there was no occasion to use them. The will of the patient was thus summoned, and it came to the body with power to expel the disease.

"Oh will! What a magnificent thing! Nothing more so than God. There are but two causes of which I know anything created --will and God. All that takes place under the sun is caused by the one or the other. Think not meanly of yourselves.

"Behind the will there lies a difficulty, I grant-the disposition; This must be acquired by reflection and grace. Pause, consider, pray."

CONSCIENCE.

There is a great variety of conscience to be found in the world. John Foster exhibits the classification of lawyer's conscience, lord's conscience, peasant's conscience, hermit's conscience, tradesman's conscience, philosopher's conscience, Christian's conscience, cleric conscience, lay conscience, conscience of reason, conscience of faith, healthy man's conscience, sick man's conscience, ingenious conscience, simple conscience, etc. But no matter what its name or kind, this strange thing called conscience when guilty of wrong will awake, and with an intensity of life and power proportioned to the length of its sleep, as if it had been growing gigantic during its slumber, will rise up, possibly only in the last hours of life, or at any rate after many years, and minister in executing upon the condemned and trembling spirit the extreme penalty of violated law. Was it not so with Charles IX.? Historians tell us that after the massacre of St. Bartholomew that monarch was known to start up in bed, rouse his grooms and send them out to listen to a great noise of

groans in the air, and among others, some furious and threatening voices, the whole resembling what was heard on the night of the massacre, yet only the fanciful creations of the guilty conscience of the king.

Dr. Fordyce, in his "Dialogues on Education," relates a striking incident illustrating the power of conscience. A jeweller, leaving home on business, took with him some of his best jewels and a large sum of money. His servant attended him, and at a convenient moment murdered him on the highway, rifled him of his valuables, suspended a large stone around his neck and threw him into a canal.

With the booty he had thus gained, the servant set off to a distant part of the country, where he had reason to believe that neither he nor his master was known. There he began to trade; at first in a very humble way, that his obscurity might screen him from observation; and in the course of many years, seemed to rise by the natural progress of business into wealth and consideration; so that his good fortune appeared at once the effect and reward of industry and virtue. Of these he counterfeited the appearance so well, that he grew into great credit, married into a good family, and was admitted into a share of the government of the town. He rose from one post to another, till at length he was chosen chief magistrate. In this office he maintained a fair character, and continued to fill it with no small applause, both as governor and a judge, until one day as he presided on the bench with some of his brethren, a criminal was brought before him, who was accused of murdering his master. The evidence came out fully; the jury brought in their verdict that the prisoner was guilty, and the whole assembly waited the sentence of the president of the court with great suspense.

The president appeared to be in unusual disorder and agitation of mind; his color changed often. At length he arose from his seat, and, descending from the bench, placed himself close to the unfortunate man at the bar, to the no small astonishment of all present. "You see before you," said he, addressing himself to those who had sat on the bench with him, "a striking instance of the just awards of heaven, which, this day, after thirty years' concealment,

presents to you a greater criminal than the man just now found guilty." He then made a full confession of his guilt and of all its aggravations. "Nor can I feel," continued he, "any relief from the agonies of an awakened conscience, but by requiring that justice be straightway executed against me in the most public and solemn manner."

The assembly stood amazed; his fellow judges were dumbfounded, but ultimately proceeded upon his own confession to pass sentence upon him, and he died with all the symptoms of a penitent mind.

This story reminds us of Churchill's words, of

"The tale which angry conscience tells,

When she with more than tragic horror swells
Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true,
She brings bad actions forth into review,
And, like the dread handwriting on the wall,
Bids late remorse awake at reason's call;

Armed at all points, bids scorpion vengeance pass,
And to the mind holds up reflection's glass-

The mind, which starting, heaves the heartfelt groan,
And hates that form she knows to be her own."

Oh, the conscience! What a wonderful faculty it is! It deals not only with the affairs of this life, but brings the soul face to face with God. As a stern and incorruptible judge, it lays down the law in all its points and bearings, and presses upon the transgressor a sense of guilt from which he cannot escape. Daniel Webster, in a great murder trial, once so forcibly described the power of a guilty conscience that Edward Everett was moved to say of one passage, "There is nothing in the language superior to it." As it admits of application, not only to murder, but to all crimes, it may appropriately be subjoined:

"He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe! Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises and beholds everything as in the

splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that murder will out. True it is that Providence hath so ordained and doth so govern things that those who break the law of heaven by shedding man's blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment it does not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it; it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession."

CONTROL OF THE THOUGHTS.

Man is responsible for his thoughts-that is, for the thoughts he encourages, cherishes and loves. You cannot be blamed for every bad suggestion that comes to mind, but you can be blamed if you keep it there and make a pet of it. The will has power to put