appears peremptory, intractable, and stubborn. It is as if the word Conscience were the appellative of two unconnected personages, of whom the one is as austere as the other is indulgent. But it is not so. Man, with all his inconsistencies, has but one faculty, or

wrong.

sense of right and

The human mind, even in the best samples, is far from being equably quick, or sensitive, in all its faculties; or equally sentient towards all the objects that are presented to it; and if we might adopt any general rule, by means of which to foreknow when, or on what occasions the intellectual and moral powers will be alive, and when inert or torpid, it might perhaps be this, that they are stimulated most certainly, and most instantaneously, by what is definite; and less so by whatever is vague, or indistinct. Now it will be found that religious persons are in fault, (a hundred instances to one,) in those multifarious matters of imperfect obligation, to which the rules of right and wrong are not readily applicable; and which come under the jurisdiction only of pure and elevated habits of feeling. Nay, such persons will often be found (from the want of efficient instruction in matters of morality) altogether unconscious of the evil of certain habits and practices, which expose them to the most grave imputations. Isaac Taylor.

Catherine Adorna was in the habit of speaking not only of purity of the heart, but what is of hardly less importance, of purity of conscience. Sanctification gives to the

conscience intensity and multiplicity of existence; so that like the flaming sword of the cherubim, it turns every way and guards the tree of life. Thomas C. Upham.

"I commend much," said Lord Bacon, "the deducing of the law of God to cases of conscience."

Nothing is morally good or evil, just or unjust, by mere will without nature, because every thing is what it is by nature and not by will. Wherefore that common distinction betwixt things that are therefore commanded, because they are good and just, and things that are therefore good and just because they are commanded, stands in need of an explication. It is not the mere will and pleasure of him that commandeth, that obligeth to do positive things commanded, but the intellectual nature of him that is commanded. The difference of these things lies in this, that there are some things which the intellectual nature obligeth to per se, of itself and directly, absolutely and perpetually, and these things are called naturally good and evil; other things the same intellectual nature obligeth to by accident only, and hypothetically upon condition of some voluntary action, either of our own or of some other persons, by means whereof things in their nature indifferent, falling under something absolutely good or evil, and thereby acquiring a new relation to the intellectual Nature, do for the time become debita or illicita. And if there were no natural justice, if the rational or intellectual nature in itself were indetermined

and unobliged to any thing, and so destitute of all morality, it were not possible that any thing should be made morally good or evil, obligatory or unlawful, or that any moral obligation should be begotten by any will or command whatsoever. Cudworth.

Only when the voice of Duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action. Hare.

When we catch our duties at their source, as a ray of light from the sun, we understand them better; but they often meet our eyes only when separated and broken into a maze of colors.

Duties are often very difficult things to apprehend rightly. As every thing is ultimately referred to duty, and as a great many things in this world are very dubious, it is manifest that duties are often very dubious likewise. There are not only clear, but dim and shadowy duties, if I may so express them, which are very perplexing, and occupy much of a man's time and thought. Often we find that what we supposed to be a duty and performed with earnest diligence, was a great delusion. Under these circumstances, it does seem to me that when we have before us an undoubted duty, one of those things which come under the axioms of morality, we can hardly lay too much stress on the performance of it. Helps.

Nor shall we two

Be happy any more; 'twill be, I feel,
Only in moments that the duty's seen
As palpably as now, - the months, the years
Of painful indistinctness are to come,
While daily must we tread these palace rooms,
Pregnant with memories of the past; your eye
May turn to mine and find no comfort there,
Through fancies that beset me, as yourself,
Of other courses, with far other issues,

We might have taken this great night,—such bear,
As I will bear! What matters happiness?

Duty! There's man's one moment - this is yours!

Browning.

All action is of infinite elas

Let us

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action? ... We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought... To think is to act. . . Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. ticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon. seek one peace by fidelity. Let me do my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history, before I have washed my own face, or justified myself to my own benefactors. How dare I read Washington's campaigns, when I have not answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors. Emerson.

Phaethon.-What then are we to say of those who speak fearlessly and openly their own opinions on every subject? for, in spite of all this, one cannot but admire them, whether rationally or irrationally.

Socrates.-We will allow them at least the honor which we do to the wild boar, who rushes fiercely through thorns and brambles upon the dogs, not to be turned aside by spears or tree-trunks, and indeed charges forward the more valiantly the more tightly he shuts his eyes. That praise we can bestow upon him, but I fear no higher one. It is expedient, nevertheless, to have such a temperament, as it is to have a good memory, or a loud voice, or a straight nose; only, like other animal passions, it must be restrained and regulated by reason and the law of right, so as to employ itself only on such matters and to such a degree as they prescribe.

"Yet no

"It may seem so in the argument," said I. argument, even of yours, Socrates, shall convince me that the spirit of truth is not fair and good, ay, the noblest possession of all."

Socrates.-If a man knew that his father had committed a shameful act, and were to publish it, he would do so by the spirit of truth. Yet such an act would be blackguardly, and to be restrained.

Phaethon.-Of course.

Socrates. Or if a man believed things derogatory to the character of the Gods, not having seen them do wrong himself, while all those who had given themselves to the study of divine things assured him that he was mistaken,