ations, in motives that are unlawful, in ten thousand elements that falsify to the expectation and to the faith of those with whom they deal.

Now, we cannot afford this. It belongs to a low stage of civilization. You cannot sell shoddy for good fabric, you cannot sell articles of food basely adulterated, you cannot adulterate medicines, you cannot forge wines or strong drinks, you cannot make business itself all the way through insincere and false, and yet pretend to maintain a high stage of civilization. Nor can men deal continuously in these things, and consent to them, and further them, and yet maintain the highest type of manhood.

You may say, "I do not pretend to maintain the highest type of manhood; I admit the blemish and flaw, I accept it, and go on with it, and will take the consequences." That is another matter; but the piteous thing is that men think they are honest, think they are religious, and even think they are eminently spiritual men; they think they are acceptable to God; they dwell in very sweet reveries about heaven; they talk about the indwelling of the Spirit of God; and yet, when you come to scrutinize the conduct of their affairs, the construction of their life, the management of their business matters, you will find organized into the whole thread and fabric of their career more or less falsity. Do I say that it vacates their religion? No, I do not think it does. I think a man may be religious in spots. I should be sorry to think that everybody was a hypocrite who was different at one time from what he was at another. If you take temptation from men, and relieve them from the pressure of self-interest, and bring them into the church, and they begin to lift their thoughts into the higher imaginative ranges beyond themselves, and you excite in them all sweet associations, and let the truth play upon their most noble faculties, on Sunday they may be better men, and may think better and speak better; but on Monday they go out and enter into the battle, and the hymn is gone, and the prayer is forgotten, and the sermon no longer sounds in their ear, and the lower faculties begin to work again and do things which are inconsistent with all their moods and professions of yesterday; and yet it

is unintentional-they do not mean to be hypocrites. Under one class of circumstances one class of faculties is excited, and under another class of circumstances another class of faculties is excited. Men are inconsistent, often, who are not insincere. They are untrue to their own highest ideal, and they act in ways that are contrary to their purposes.

So I perceive men to be right in spots, carrying up some elements of character nobly and beautifully; but some sides of themselves they allow to sink low down and become mischievous; they are irregular and comparatively speaking low-toned in their religious life. For no spiritual fervor can ever make up for the want of ethical correctness.

The two elements which men need are morality at the bottom and spirituality at the top; for mere morality is dull, heavy, unless it is spiritualized; and spirituality is evanescent, and like the early morning cloud, unless it has its lower roots run down into sound practical life. Both things are needful.

How, when society is constructed as it is, men who are in the administration of affairs shall escape and be able to make new channels, is a very serious question. It is very difficult for a man to be a public officer and be truthful. It is very difficult for a man to be a lawyer and be truthful. It is difficult for a man to be a physician and be truthful. Not that men in these callings are so depraved that they want to be untruthful; they want to be truthful; but they find themselves so met by influences, hedged in by walls, confined to ways in which custom makes their feet to walk, that constantly and unwillingly and unwittingly they run into the evils of falsehood. Therefore it would seem as though there were no way of avoiding these evils except by changing the organic structure of the human race. Falsity so inheres in the framework and substance of society, that men who do not wish to be untruthful are constantly drawn down and made to be false to their best ideals of themselves.

And yet, I believe it is in the power of all men more than they do, and of some men altogether, to be superior to their circumstances. I admit that those great influences which are acting night and day insensibly, and with a distributed

and continuous power, do in the long run constitute the strongest forces that act upon men; but I believe in that illumination of the spirit, that life of the soul given by the power of God, by which a man may be superior to his circumstances, and even to these constantly outlying and inbeating influences which deteriorate his life.

Meanwhile, there is nothing clearer in the world than the unprofitableness of all trick, fraud, guise, insincerity, dishonesty, and untruthfulness. And it is for the interest of every man, no matter what his business may be, and no matter how many he has to serve him, that truth should be spoken between man and man. It is not the mother alone who ought to be an instructor of the truth, teaching the child at her knee the sacredness and honor of it; it is not love alone that is interested in having the truth spoken; it is not the priest alone, who instructs men to fear God, and love the truth, and labor for ideal character and purity; the manufacturer is interested in having the truth told; the merchant is; the customer is; the low in society-the wretched poor-are. One of the greatest curses of human life is the waste which is occasioned in communities by reason of the indulgence in untruth between man and man, disintegrating society, enfeebling affairs, making them operose, rendering them hard to be borne.

We are incessantly punished a thousand-fold for our transgressions in this life as well as in the life which is to come.

Against every temptation, then, against every seeming necessity, I lift up the higher ideal of manliness, the truer wisdom, the nobler path, and say to every one who is now venturing upon life, and has his way to make, and his character to establish, there is nothing better for you than manhood. There is no favor, no parentage, no capital, that can be compared to that. A man who stands in the midst of affairs, tested, tried, proved to be a man of unswerving integrity, a man of absolute truth, a man that is true, faithful, honest, honorable, is more valuable than gold, even in a commercial point of view. A man in politics who, though he may be ambitious and partisan, is shown to be faithful, hon

orable and trustful-even in politics such a man, in the long run, wins. One reason why there are so many mushrooms and puff-balls in society is that men forswear morality. In the great bustle of commerce, in the conflict of affairs, in the heated ways of public life, men think that it is not only safe but justifiable and profitable for them to set aside the fundamental qualities of true manhood. That is the reason why, when they are cut down, they never rise again.

We honor great men; but it does not take much to make a great man in a community where there are newspapers. Great men have a campaign; great men have one term in Congress; great men have a five years' or a ten years' career in the State Legislature; and great men think themselves to be immovably great; but many great men fall, and once falling, never rise again.

It does not hurt some things to fall. The elastic ball, when it falls, springs up again; the solid metal, when it falls, may not spring up, but it is solid yet; but find me an apple that, though fair of skin, is rotten at the core, and let that once fall, and what becomes of it? However tempting it looks, when the shaking hand once touches it, and it falls, shall it rise again?

Suppose, as an application of this discourse, I should persuade some of you to try this way of life? Suppose I should persuade the maiden, no longer to guile, no longer to elegant indirections, no longer to the most exquisite and winning wiles and craft, but to simplicity and to truth. Is there anything that makes the virtuous matron a noble pattern of womanhood more than this-she always speaks the truth?

"My wife," said a man to me, "needs no memory. No matter what she says to-day, she need not trouble herself to think what she said yesterday or the day before. It was true then, and it is true now." The old proverb is, "Liars should have long memories;" but no man ever had a memory so long and deft as to make consistent a long thread of indirections that multiply themselves indefinitely. There is no ideal like that of a reliable character. There is nothing so venerable and noble as a man who is true, who means truth, and who casts upon every one the atmosphere of truth.

It is better a thousand-fold than the best devices, or than the cunningest quips and quirks. It is essentially noble. It is of God, and God-like. And in the great battle of life, where so many go down corrupted for want of good morals, a young man can take no shield better than truth, the love of it, and the purpose to stand by it, swearing fidelity to it, and taking evil report as on the way to final good report. This is the very best equipment a man can have so far as his success among men is concerned.

It takes a little longer to build on truth and morality. He that builds on these qualities builds so much deeper, and builds with so much more ease, that it takes more time; but once built, truth and rectitude stand. They who are too much in a hurry; they who do not believe that truth is necessary; they who are conceited and very venturesome; they who think that they can, by indirections and glittering insincerities, and cunning devices, win success, and stand therein-they, like the fool, rush on and perish.

For your own happiness' sake, for the love of those who surround you, for the respect which, first or last, every man longs for in the community in which he dwells, for the noble and honorable old age to which you look forward, and for your hope in God, I commend you to sincerity, to fidelity, to honor, and to truth. Pure and unspotted, stand on the truth ; and in the hour of emergency the truth shall stand by you, and repay you a thousand-fold.