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And, to show that this principle is no mere philosophical abstraction, let us note a few of the familiar practical exhibitions of its working. Not far-fetched, but every-day illustrations they shall be, and briefly sketched. Two men are making a business bargain with each other. It is for goods or labor or skill on one side, to be paid for in money on the other; or it is some kind of exchange of service or of property. On the ground of purely selfish propensity each strives to get the better end of the bargain, the utmost possible for himself, leaving to the other the shorter part of the exchange. But there comes in a third party to this contract, demanding equal and honest measure between them. This demand is made by the Eternal that is in them, the voice that pleads in each of their hearts, however much they may attempt to confuse and silence it, for honesty and honor. These, it says, are the pathway of the Eternal: make room for them in your contract if you would have it hold before the moral tribunal of mankind and your own conscience.

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Questions of great public moment arise, tions affecting the interests, the physical and moral welfare, of large numbers of people; questions of social and political reform; questions pertaining to the relations between capital and labor. Here, too, it is some form of selfish interest that is the cause of strife. One man's or party's selfishness pulls this way, and another's selfishness pulls that way. "Follow the paths of the Eter

nal," cries a voice above self-interest or party interest, "which are ways of justice and equity." Find them, and they will safely bridge the gulf that separates you. Or it may be a strife between nations. National selfishness, a false pride, a false patriotism, high, giddy-headed arrogance and boastfulness, and even selfish individual ambitions, help to foment the terrible passions of war. But in the midst of all such international strifes there enters another power that demands justice and magnanimity,-a Power that is the arbiter among the nations, and declares that only by adhering to these ways of the Eternal Righteousness can strife be allayed and peace preserved permanently.

A young man or a young woman reaches the age of discretion and responsibility. Youth with its tasks and its training is over. They are about to take their places in the striving world of business, or of professional or social achievement. They are elate with anticipation and the sense of freedom, eager for the new tests of their powers. They can follow some of the manifold ways of selfish pleasure and pursuit; they can live for social success, make fashion a god, regard wealth as the chief end of existence, and covet the material luxuries and enjoyments which wealth can purchase. They may be ambitious of high position and distinction without much concern about the means. They may be free even to follow the beck of false pleasure to lower levels of folly and vice. But

there is no young man or maiden who has had the fortune of a home education of even average worth to whom, at such an era in their lives, there will not come from their own hearts a protest against all the grosser of these forms of self-indulgence, and a summons to higher paths and pursuits, for a nobler success. There are high fields of honor and duty and usefulness, of noble culture and unselfish service to others' good, which also invite their fealty and their consecration; and this is the invitation of the Eternal. In brief, it is an hour when the ways of the carnal self and the ways of the moral self are alike soliciting their hearts; and they must choose between them. The earnest appeal of the nobler self is, Bar out the tumult of the selfish ambitions and passions, the revelry of carnal desire and ignoble pleasures, and follow the highways of the Eternal.

Again, the passion of love enters the heart, that kind of love which is Nature's special way for the preservation and progress of society, through the founding of the family and the home. This instinct of love, in itself, is literally the constraining power of the Eternal in the human organism, so that the old religious tradition is right which represents marriage not merely as a civil contract, but as a divinely ordained institution. Indeed, it may be in this sense, as the Catholics claim, rightly called a sacrament. Yet how often marriage is degraded to merely a union of self-interests, or, following the sexual instinct alone, may

even be debased to prostitution and cruel sensualism! The flesh itself then, in protest against the profanation, cries out for the higher law, for the Power whose ways are manifest in Reason and in Conscience as a law for the effective control of the instinct. Thus, and thus only, can marriage be lifted above the physical bond to a vital union in heart and soul, to the end of increased intellectual and moral productiveness. In every marriage relation, lest passion should become selfishly extortionate, and the parties be too exclusively absorbed in their own joint interests and pleasures, let husband and wife take their vows to the law of righteousness as well as to each other, and through that bond in the Eternal be joined together. Then shall marriage become, not the debaser, but the sustainer of purity, holiness, moral growth, and genuine love.

There is, in fine, no personal relation in life, whether it be between neighbor and neighbor, between citizen and citizen, between husband and wife, between teacher and the taught, or among the various members of the household, where the voice of the Eternal does not proclaim the law of righteousness as the way to unity and mutual helpfulness in the upbuilding of character. It is the voice of that mysterious, unseen guest who makes the third in every human transaction, calling for justice, honesty, and honor, who enters noiselessly every company, to silence the slanderous tongue and to command courtesy, candor, kindness, and

truth. It is the voice of the One over all and through all, who has the right to say:

"They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings.
They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.”

Man may follow the ways of the lower self, which end in disappointment and ashes; or he may follow this higher guide, whose ways, even when difficult, are lined with pleasantness, and all whose paths are toward peace.

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