fluences, by self-interest, the love of pleasure or gain. The purse, with its metal contents perhaps, was too near this needle of the soul. But he that would be safe at last must regard it. He must steer his course by the intimations which it gives. It is possible that ships abandoned by polar navigators should drift down to some southern coast and be again recovered, but he who drifts on the sea of life is lost be yond all recovery. And what is a career of pleasure but drifting with the breath of jesting and amusement, and what is a career of selfishness, but scudding without a helmsman before the blasts of passion and interest? Does any man imagine that thus he will ever reach the port? No, he needs the compass, he needs it free from all disturbing influences, he needs to study and heed its pointing finger, and steer as it directs. Unless he does, he is lost. The man without a conscience, if such a thing could be, would be the greatest wretch on earth—the most amazing object of pity, and is he less so, who, with a conscience, heeds it not, or allows it to be subjected to influences that pervert it? And yet what is any continuous course of evil but a steady, systematic perversion and offending of the conscience? It is like a straining of the eye till the power of vision is lost. It is a tampering with those convictions of duty by which the soul is held back as by a cable from the maelstrom of perdition. What would you think of a man who on board a vessel should tamper with the compass, should allow scraps of iron to be left near it, and then throw some covering over them, that they might not be seen? He would imperil the vessel and its cargo, his own life and the life of all on board. And yet this is what that man does who allows his conscience to be perverted, who brings his purse or his business or his pleasure so near to it as to draw it from its true line. He imperils his soul with all its precious interests. He imperils his everlasting inheritance and the welfare of all that are associated with him or are influenced by his example. Or what would you think of a man who should throw the compass overboard, and should choose to be drifted with the winds and currents whithersoever they might bear him, to strange seas or to hidden rocks. And yet this is no more than what that man does who throws conscience overboard, and allows himself to drift on the current of pleasure or be driven by the blasts of passion or interest. He is afloat on a stormy sea, and he will never reach the port. We need no spirit of prophecy to be assured that his life will be a tragedy, and that ere long he will become a sunk or stranded wreck. Above all things, then, tamper not with the conscience. Never allow it to be warped by unhallowed influences. A little thing, like a mote in the eye, may irritate, if not injure, it irreparably. One great attainment of Probation is a properly educated conscience. It is the monitor of duty; it is that which echoes in the soul the voice of its Maker. If it speaks doubtfully, if you have stifled its utterance, if you have perverted it from its true direction and scope, then you are risking the results of life on a false compass-false through your complicity, or by your own act. "These things ought ye to have done."-MATT. xxii. 23. HE word ought implies duty. Is there such a thing TH trol of a man above his own personal interest-above his pleasures and his tastes? Thousands live as if they fully believed there was not. They are governed by self-interest. The great question with them the maelstrom that swallows up everything elseis, What will contribute to my gain, to my pleasure? The world they live in, and the world they live for, centers in self. Their morality-if they are moral-is a matter of education or taste. Not to be honest would be a loss of reputation or standing. Not to be sober would risk health and success in business. All their virtue is simply natural amiability, or a matter of habit or calculation. Such men often go through the world with a fair reputation, and do some good on their way-good, however, not of the kind that springs from design, or holy purpose, but good like that of a wheel in a piece of mechanism-for God's providence, without reference to their own plan, makes them wheels in the social organism. Sheltered by honorable associations, the tornado of temptation spares them. They stand visibly upright to the last, and no stain attaches to their names. But have they answered the end of life? Have they been governed by right motives? Have they built on the rock, or on the sand? Sometimes they give back an answer themselves which contradicts their life. Sometimes, as remorse coils its folds about their sinking frame, they confess with inward agony that they have committed a great and lifelong mistake. They spurn as mockery the soothing flattery that they have been upright and moral. The memory of their self-indulgence is to them like the "hand-writing on the wall." They see nothing high or noble or pure to redeem their life from the blight of a wasted probation. And yet men will say, If I interfere with no man's rights, may I not consult my own convenience or pleasure? May I not do what I will with my talents, my time, mywealth? What good will it do me to be a hermit, or an ascetic, to crucify ease or comfort or taste by selfdenial? Well, let us suppose that a man need recognize no law above his own convenience or interest. What one may do, all may do. Duty is dispensed with. No man asks, What ought I to do? There is no ought in the case. Every man's interest, taste, or pleasure is his rule. What follows? What is the result in the family, in society, in the state? You have dissolved the whole framework of social order. The parent neglects the child, and the child disobeys the parent. Every brother is a Cain, every mother is an Herodias, every neighbor is an Ishmael. Will you remonstrate against this? How can you do it? You must appeal to that obsolete principle of duty. You must recognize the fact that we are not independent of one another-that we owe to one another, without respect to what we receive, love and service. Introduce the principle into the State. It repeals every law, for civil legislation is swallowed up by individual caprice. It reduces social order to chaos. It inaugurates anarchy and revolution and endless civil feuds. It sanctions tyranny, and theft, and murder, and the will of the strongest. Ambition, avarice, and revenge abolish courts, and bludgeons and pistols take the place of sheriffs. And what becomes of patriotism? The State cannot claim that a man should forego ease or personal gain, to serve either in its councils or in its armies. But this is not all. If there is no such thing as duty, no promise is binding, no oath is inviolable. Why should a man observe truth or justice if there is no such thing as moral obligation independent of taste or interest? And without truth between man and man, where is society, where is the State? The drifting sand, every grain independent of its fellow, is cohesion and solidity. itself, to a system in which every ruler is a Nero, and every subject an Ishmael. Yet all this flows forth as the legitimate result when you dispense with the cement and the authority of duty. The veriest despotism that barbarism ever constructed could not hold together an hour without some respect for the obligations of duty. The Dey of Algiers, or even the King of Dahomey, is forced, in spite of the fiendliest passions, sometimes, at least, to keep his promise, to fulfill his engagements. There is, then, such a thing as duty. There is something which claims the right to govern a man, above his own taste, or caprice, or interests. Nay, his own nature, seared and flawed by sin till it threatens to crumble to |