DUTY.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS UNIVERSALIST CONVENTION AT JOLIET, SEPTEMBER 24, 1885.

REV. CHARLES CONKLIN.

The word duty has a smooth sound. But it stands for something very rugged. It is a modest little word; it makes a small drain upon the alphabet. But it would be difficult to put any number of letters together and make them represent something larger or finer.

If it demands little of the alphabet it demands much of men.

He who has resolved to follow the path of duty, must prepare for difficulties and dangers. The road is not macadamized. The ascents and descents are not graded. Some parts of the way are only indicated by a

Doubtless there are, far ahead, stretches of territory through which the devotee must pick his own path, and blaze the way for those who, long after he is out of sight, shall follow.

Should God stir your mind with some deep conviction of truth, and present it to you in some form varying from the accepted standards of your brethren, and should you feel it

to be your religious duty to utter those convictions, for the spiritual elevation of your fellows, you will find what I mean by difficulty. Your life path as far as to-day is concerned, will be much more comfortable if you silence that voice and conform to the thought fashion of the hour. Socially, and sometimes financially, you might about as well be out of the world as out of the fashion in religious belief. Times are somewhat changing, but even yet in some centres, if you want to move in what is called the "best society," if you want your children popular with other children, if you want your name mentioned without a shrug of the shoulder, you must not let it get abroad that you are unorthodox in theological conviction. Live a dual life, support preaching that you secretly despise, send your children to Sunday-school where they imbibe ideas that were once the nightmare of your thought, put Orthodox books on your centre table and Universalist books up in your cosy den where no neighbors or neighbor's children. intrude, and your family will be invited to all the social gatherings of

the neighborhood, and you will be made a trustee of the most popular and most exclusive church in town. What more could you wish this side of Paradise? Or, suppose everything noble within you rises in protest against some concrete form of sin in your community. Fight the social evil. Fight soulless and heartless monopolies. Wage an earnest warfare against the drink traffic. Give not only your money-that is a cheap way of unloading responsibility-but give your personal attention to some specific phase of moral reform, and see what a smooth and flowery walk is the reformer's path. Great will be your reward in this world. Your neighbors will very kindly point you out to all new comers as a very high principled man-but considerable of a crank.

But if you want to know the most pebbly as well the most hilly road through life, just follow your sense of duty in politics. This is supposed to be a free country. So it is. Every man is supposed to possess the right to protest against political mismanagement, trickery, corruption, with all his might and main. He has that right, but if he wants to know what trouble is; if he wants every third man he meets to feel round for a club, he has only to get up in some primary meeting and ventilate his honest indignation, or give expression to it in some other open and manly way. He can be a dutiful citizen but he must never expect to run for Congress. There is much less weariness, there are much better chances for preferment in church, lodge, club, or primary meeting, when one serves the time spirit and shirks the performance of moral duty.

The path of duty is for this reason a lonesome road. It is patronized by what Matthew Arnold calls "the saving remnant of the human race."

The crowds go the other way. Moral heroes are scarce. "I see but few men in your congregation," said a critical stranger to one of our liberal preachers. "There are few such men," was the Pastor's proud reply. There is an element of sadness in this. Every conscious man since this world began, or rather since that almost infinitely distant, and mysteriously indistinct parting of the ways where man realized that he was man and not animal, has had his Juniper Bush under which he has writhed in anguish at the perversity of his brethren. The silence amidst which a good man finds himself sometimes is something awful. God is good enough company for any man, but it is a little more cheerful to have some folks along. A crowd is in itself a magnet whose power even the sternest and truest feel. But prophets, reformers, saviors have walked mostly alone. It was the privilege of the greatest and noblest of them all to have the unprecedented number of twelve disciples. Furthermore duty offers no emoluments. No spoils system there. "Follow the rainbow to the end," they used to say, "and you'll find a bag of gold." The mass of virtuous people are following the rainbow for the bag of gold. The Mahometan is painfully sensitive as to his religious duties; retires promptly from the ball at the hour of prayer, fulfills all commandments in the Koran, starves himself during his long annual fast, with the clear understanding that these things shall constitute him a freeholder in Paradise. He is a performer of duty for hire. The wages are a heavenly palace, a retinue of servants, a harem full of beauties, wine without measure and all to slow music. The Mahometan does not serve God for nought.

In a few minor respects, the commonly accepted Orthodox sanctions

of duty are vastly superior. The paying teller's window however appears here. here. Admittance to heaven is by ticket. The tickets constitute compensation for faithful performance of duty. The Christmas-tree up there, is loaded down with gifts inscribed "For a good boy "-"For a good girl." To multitudes of really painstaking and devout people the kingdom of heaven is expected to come by observation. Like the bird flying through the upper air, asking where the atmosphere could be found, and like the fish swimming the mighty deep and inquiring the whereabouts of the sea, these good people fail to recognize heaven when it comes to them.

Duty however holds out no prospect of perquisites. It strictly forbids the acceptance of "tips." "For myself alone" is the sole condition imposed upon the true devotee.

But if outward reward is scornfully set aside, there is an inward satisfaction, a condition of peaceful elation inhering in the law of conscience, which may be described as the result of obedience to Duty's call. I suppose there is no happiness on earth happiness on earth or in the heavens so real, so deep, so lasting, so richly satisfying to the soul, as the feeling that comes over a man who has done his whole duty. What cares he for consequences? He leaves them to God. No vivid characters of judgment and condemnation flash upon his eyes, as he sits down to his feast. No midnight knockings arrest his slumbers. No ghosts of slaughtered opportunities rise from their graves to paralyze him on the eve of battle. He walks the earth a free man, though ball and chain clank after his footfalls. "I thank the gods I am no such slave as Nero Cæsar," devoutly murmurs Epictetus, in the field, as the royal chariot passes by. Madame Guyon in her

dungeon sees a fairer world, and lives a more joyous life than the fawning courtiers or the wily priests intriguing against her liberty. The mechanic who skillfully and beautifully constructs his piece of work, the minister who preaches in his noblest vein, the artist who has put his very soul into the picture before him, the doctor who beholds in his patient's swift recovery the vindication of his own method, get something more than pay for their work. They are pervaded with a peace that quenches every ache and pain of the past; they are morever thrilled with a new influx of life that enlarges and ennobles their being. They, themselves have had a cubit added to their moral stature. They have a grander outlook upon the universe from this time forth.

Is there nothing more? Yes, the tardy world is touched at last. "Not one life is lived in vain." Certainly the life transfigured by the conscious performance of duty is not lived in vain. Time tests everything, and adjusts all values. The imitation lady's imitation diamonds glitter to-day and the lapidary can scarcely tell them from the real; a few months later and the dull, dead, lustreless things will be carried out with the ashes. But the real are a joy forever. If we make the temperature about one hundred and ten degrees for our duty-loving contemporaries, we exhaust our superlatives in praise of the God-fearing, upright men of the past. And well may we. For, as we look backward, upon what a dissolving view do we gaze. Into the vague mist, yea into absolute nothingness fade the myriads who have been time-servers, cowards, windmills, weathercocks, cringing hypocrites or useless cumberers of the ground, and out in bold relief stand the long line of true and noble men