It

The Bible places temperance among the cardinal virtues. esteems it, as a rule of the earthly life, at par with faith, knowledge, brotherly-kindness and charity. The man who striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things, and he who would wield the best influence, and meet all the high obligations of present life must totally abstain.

No man has a moral right to drink. Drinking is wrong, and no man has a right to do wrong. Every lover of his kind, every admirer of peaceful and happy homes, every respecter of social order and religious prosperity, will wholly abstain from everything that casts down and destroys, and he will do his best to urge the principle of total abstinence upon others. At a large dinner party, in the presence of distinguished foreign and American Statesmen, Mr. Colfax, then Vice-President of the United States, declined to take wine. Upon this a senator, who had already taken much, exclaimed across the table, "Colfax dare not drink!" "You are right, I dare not!" answered Colfax, and a braver reply could not have been uttered. This is the sort of principle we want. A little moral courage to say "No!" would save many a man from the drunkard's life, the drunkard's death, and the drunkard's doom. The grace of God will give this courage, and lead on the tempted soul to victory It has done so, and will again. "By the grace of God, and only by his grace," says Dr. Henry A. Reynolds, whose work in the Red Ribbon Reform movement was so influential for good, "have I been enabled to be a total abstainer from strong drink for nine years, and by it I fully expect to endure unto the end." His friends from Maine to California trust that he may hold fast his confidence.

CHASTITY.

Once lost, character, and
The ancients esteemed it,

Chastity is the jewel of the heart. generally reputation, are lost with it. but too seldom illustrated it. God's chosen people sang its praises, but it remained for Christ to make the word common with the deed, enjoining it as a most solemn obligation of life. Unchastity is a scourge which brings its sore punishments upon both body

and soul. It destroys religious feeling, drives God from the heart, and opens the door to the worst forms of evil It brutalizes the affections, degrades the intellectual faculties, kills all holy aspirations, and cuts off all hope of heaven. The Apostle Paul, in several of his epistles, rings out the declaration, clear and strong, that no unchaste person hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Says Milton

"So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,

That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand hovered angels lacky here,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt."

It pays to be chaste, to maintain bodily and moral purity in the sexual relations, and to gain and cultivate the virtue of selfcontrol in forbidden desires and inclinations. This is the groundwork of saintliness, for it is the chaste heart in which the pure Spirit dwells, refining the feelings, uplifting the imaginations, and imparting to the very countenance a halo of holy light. Such a condition sought after is one step toward such a condition gained. Men have attained to it, enjoyed and defended it with the utmost jealousy and care.

Francis de Sales' love for purity was so great that he could not bear the slightest action or movement, however accidental, which was contrary to it; he used to call it the beautiful whiteness of the soul. "However bright and clear a mirror may be," he was wont to say, "it becomes clouded by a mere breath; and the lily grows safely among thorns, pure and sweet, till some rude hand touches it." In this spirit he inculcated the most rigorous modesty in every member, in hands, eyes and speech, not permitting any game or accident to be counted as an excuse for its neglect.

Of interior chastity he used to say that that of the body is merely a husk, whereas interior purity is the kernel; that which is internal is the root, and external purity as the branches and leaves which spring therefrom. He defined chastity of the heart as total renunciation of all illicit affections, citing St. Barnard, who says that it is almost more difficult for a man who mixes freely with the other sex to preserve absolute purity of heart than to

raise the dead. In this, he was perhaps mistaken, but his conception of chastity was certainly of the highest order. That "purity of intention which sees God in all things, and all things in God," seems to have been the principle of his life. And it is safe to say that, in the maintenance of this virtue, no man can have too strict a notion or too high a standard.

PART SEVENTH:

RELIGIOUS LIFE.