absolute corruption, is still-like the rock interfused with silver-veined with conscience. In spite of the most confirmed and desperate depravity, the soul bows unconsciously before the majesty of the truth it hates, and Felix trembles at the look of his prisoner, even while his words mingle their tones with the clanking of his chain. If you examine piecemeal a steam-engine, in its operations, you come to what is called the governor, which is designed to regulate the engine in all its motions. You have no more doubt of its design than you have of the existence of the engine itself. So if you take the human mind to pieces you find that this-infinitely more curious and complicate than any structure that human genius ever contrived-has its governor also.

It has

that which assumes to guide, and judge, and control all a man's actions that which grasps the helm of the mind as unhesitatingly and boldly as the captain of a vessel directs how it shall be trimmedissues its orders, as it were in conscious mastery-looks the soul in the face when it yields to low, base selfinterest, and says: "You mean, dastardly wretch! blush to hold up your head among decent men." That governor is the human conscience. A man may not like its control or company. He may abuse it, and violate it, and spurn it, and stupify it with vice and drunkenness; he may put it under the heel of his lusts, and bore out its eyes with sophistry, and smother its voice with the loud tones of revel;-but, torn, bleeding, dishonored, gasping in whispers it lives yet, and it claims its rightful throne, and it maintains still the tone of a king; and sometimes it flings off all the murderous lusts that trampled on it, and rises up like a giant to reässert its control over a wrecked and trembling nature. It can

not be destroyed. It can not be exiled. To the very last, when the flesh crumbles, and the limbs shake with weakness, and reason itself is ready to give way, conscience speaks in the soul with a voice as much more authoritative than all other voices, as God's thunders are louder than human revels.

Was

And whence is conscience? Is it an accident? it dropped in as a fragment to fill up the seams or round out the intellectual or social nature of man? Nay; is it not the very substance of our moral nature, and does it not bear as plainly the stamp of design as the governor in a steam-engine? And was it not put there by the great Builder, and does not its very presence deciare louder and plainer than words, that man, in all his faculties, tastes, sympathies, and purposes, is to yield to its control? It is the constitutional sovereign of the empire of our faculties. To disregard it, is treason; to disobey it, is rebellion. To set up pleasure, or convenience, or gain, or personal or selfish interest, in place of it, is to dethrone the rightful monarch; it is, as it were, to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus.

Man, then, is made under law; he is created subject to the law of duty. That law is supreme. It is as much above lust, passion, and interest as the laws of the United States are above the resolutions of a caucus of secessionists as the laws of Sinai are above the rules of etiquette at Belshazzar's revels or Dives's feasts.

If any man could yet doubt it, he would only need to compare the results of a life of duty with a life of pleasure -the lofty heroism of a Daniel faithful to his God amid all the allurements of a heathen court, with the selfish aspirations of a Haman climbing up to swing from his own gallows the sublime fidelity of a Washington to

the sacred trust his country reposed in him, with the baseness of an Arnold selling himself to a golden infamy -the truthfulness of unswerving integrity under whose shadow the wronged finds shelter and the wretched pity, with the trifling, vain, heedless indulgence that degrades a man to the level of a peacock or a swine. Placed side by side, even a fool might be struck by the contrast. One is sunlight, the other fog; one is the fragrance of Eden, the other a stench. The study of one inspires and thrills us beyond the note of drum or trumpet or martial strain; the sight of the other makes us sick of human nature. We turn away as from a slough of filth and loathing. Yet one is duty incarnate, the other selfishness gone to seed.

The great question, then, which is to determine the plan and destiny of a man's life is this: Shall I yield to the supreme law of duty? Shall I bow to the mandate of conscience, and of God speaking through the conscience? Shall I put base or selfish interest foremost, or shall I simply ask, "What ought I to do," and make the answer final?

On that decision depends more than pen can write or tongue can tell. On that hinge the results of probation and the issues of eternity. By that is to be determined whether these years shall be carved into the statuary of noble and godly deeds, or whether they shall be ground down to the sandy rubbish with which Satan strews the pathway of blinded thousands to hell-whether your example shall be a moral lighthouse which the stormtossed shall see and bless, or a rocket, whose charred remnant shall be trod under the heel of contempt, even by its once admirers-whether you will mount upward or sink downward-soar or crawl-be Godlike or beast

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like-be the world's benefactor or its curse-grow up to the stature of a sanctified manhood or be dwarfed and shriveled to the littleness of base and selfish aims.

Can any man hesitate with such a choice before him? He might almost as well hesitate between an angel's crown and a felon's cell, between the benediction of Heaven and the agonies of despair.

And now the question meets him, What is duty? It is not a difficult one to him who is ready to deny himself and take up his cross-to one who has made up his mind fully to shrink from no task which he ought to meetto him who stands resolved to thread every deed and thought on the string of right. Such a man will soon find that all authority centers in the will of God, that morality has its true and eternal basis in religion, that he cannot begin his course without first asking, What do I owe to that great Being in whose hand my breath is, and whose are all my ways? And he cannot long consider this without being brought to feel how grossly he has sinned already, and how much he needs the pardoning love and grace of God.

And then may he find in the volume of God's revealed will a release from all his difficulties, and a solution of all his doubts. He will find provision made for all his need. The path of duty will open before him, and he will see that its very starting-point is just where the penitent sinner bows in humble confession before the cross of Christ.

A

VII.

LIFE SERVICE DUE TO GOD.

"Will a man rob God?"-MAL. iii. 8.

S morality-in a general sense-is duty toward man, so religion is duty toward God. Both are demanded of us, and we cannot be just if we deny the claims of either. If we allow one and refuse the other, we stand condemned by our own act. We are inconsistent with ourselves.

And yet there are thousands who claim-and perhaps justly, as they understand it—to be upright and moral, whose religion is but a form and many times a mockery. They are honest with men-as they measure obligation. They are dishonest toward God. If they admit that they ought to obey and serve and love their Maker, it is an admission that dies on the lip and never affects the heart. With little or no anxiety they tread their own convictions under foot; they press on in a course which their consciences condemn, and which conflicts with all the principles which they avow or even cherish in social intercourse.

Such is the career of thousands and tens of thousands. They palliate it. They excuse it. They offset it by an array of their own virtues, their integrity or morality. But what is its character? What is the proper name for it? It is robbery-robbing God.

But "will a man rob God?" There is something atrocious in the very thought! To rob a stranger is