"there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible." Hence there must be no "tapering off" of pleasant vices, no letting of ourselves down easily from perilous heights, no treating of our resolution to break off the evil course, none of Rip Van Winkle's genial conclusions "not to count this one," and this, and this. The teacher I am following formulates another maxim, than which for the earning of good habits I have not found a better, nor one that my own experience more happily or painfully confirms. It is: "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain... No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better." The good intentions with which hell is paved proverbially are good intentions that have never "lost" because they have never had "the name of action." "A character," says John Stuart Mill, "is a completely fashioned will"; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is, we are told, "an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which our actions actually occur. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in weltering in a sea of sensibility and emotion, and who never does a manly concrete deed." "The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line," says our professor; "and even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character." And now I will give you for what it is worth his final maxim: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous effort every day.

That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points; do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it.... Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. ... If the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself ... to energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellowmortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." This doctrine has, I well remember, the confirmation of John Stuart Mill's opinion, always careful and serene. I had myself supposed that one had little need to manufacture opportunities for self-denial or strenuous volition, that they abounded in the most ordinary lives. I had supposed that, if one didn't meet them, he was dodging them. I had imagined that, if one attended manfully to the necessary self-denials of his condition, he would find exercise enough to brace himself for any possible encounter. But, as I have said, I give you the professor's suggestion for what it is worth. You can take it

home, and weigh it carefully.

These are the ethics of the physiological psychologist who is much contemned, but they are as clear and stern as any that I know. "Could the young but realize,” he says, “how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' He may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes." And as it is with every base consent, so is it with every brave resistance of our will. That, also, is so much earned, so much saved, so much invested to accumulate

capital and interest for the sum with which our moral freedom must be bought, and with no devil's mortgage that can be foreclosed against us in some great day of account.

But the whole story of the price of moral freedom is not told in this delineation of the way in which good habits are confirmed, and make spontaneous and effortless the majority of our decisions in the moral sphere. There is an intellectual element in the complete affair which is of great significance. "When the will is healthy," we are told, "the vision must be right, and the action must obey the vision's lead." The vision must be right! That is the aspect of the matter we have recognized in the motto of our Church,—“The truth shall make you free." To do the right, we must be able to

see things as they are. And that we cannot do while we are as full of prejudice as we often, as we generally, are. The price of freedom is the surrender of our prejudice, the continual cherishing of the feeling that we may, after all, be wrong, the persistent search for what is actually true, not for mere confirmation of the opinions which for one reason or another we desire to hold. Audi alteram partem! "Hear the other side!" Read the other side! Study the great masters of science, and so cultivate the scientific temper; and then, if you can, carry it over into the realm of politics and the realm of theology and the judgments of the social world.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish "; and they still perish, if they are not obedient to the heavenly vision, once it has been clearly seen. For such obedience of the moral will the spontaneity of habits, formed by our persistent choices of the higher things, is all we need. Be resolutely bent to see things as they are; launch yourself with as strong and decided an initiative as possible; never suffer an exception to occur till the good habit is securely rooted in your life; seize the first possible opportunity to act on every noble resolution; suspect yourself if any day goes by and there is nothing hard to do and nothing sweet and pleasant to be given up,-do all these things, and few occasions will arise which shall not find you armed and mailed and ready

for the battle. Few; and yet no antecedent preparation can make us sure that no temptation can assail us which our force of habit cannot easily disarm. And what then? Then is the time and place for that "essential achievement of the will when it is most voluntary,—to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind." "A moment's thought is passion's passing knell."

"When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth replies, 'I can,'"

if he has the force, the energy, the strength of will, the sturdiness of effort, "to hear the still, small voice unflinchingly; when the awful mandate comes, looks at its face, consents to its presence, clings to it, affirms it, in spite of the host of exciting images which rise in revolt against it and would expel it from the mind." "It must be held steadily before the mind until it fills the mind," and then the victory is won. For then as to a banner lifted up, as to the slogan which brings clansmen trooping over burn and fell, come swarming all the natural allies of virtue to her hard defence. Only attention to the thing that must be done! Yes, only that. But, in the effort after that, body and soul have sometimes parted company, and in the joy of the successful enterprise it has seemed to some as if the heavens opened, and they saw the face of God.

So every

"With a great price obtained I this freedom." church and every state, if they could find a voice, and every man, might say, who has deliberately attained unto a freedom that is no semblance, but a divine reality. Nor is the price too much for what it brings. It is a great sum, and it cannot be quickly earned even by the most diligent and strenuous of men. But there are many ways in which a little of it can be earned, and many mickles make a muckle here as in the heaping up of poorer stuff. And remember that the price is not all required at once; for the most part, only a little of it at a time, though now and then such an amount as beggars us outright. God give us grace, we helping him as best we

can, to meet the uttermost demand. And, whether we were born free or have obtained our freedom at a great expense, let us not be content with our own liberty, but remember those in bonds as bound with them, and work and strive, if haply we may hasten somewhat their deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.