and then the appreciation of the adaptability of the various possessions of one's life to satisfying those needs, and the fulfilling of that purpose. We can see from this that a purposeless life, or a life of low nature, is sure to be a wasteful life.

Now let us take this special possession of energy and see its possibilities of waste. Let us not think now of what we are usually afraid of wasting, our money, or time, or thought, or love, but of this alone. In the first place, what is it? I should say that we should best describe it, though it is not easy to do so in any words, as power in action. The reason that we find it so hard to define is, I think, that it is one of those things which shows itself in its results much more than it does viewed by itself. Indeed, it amounts to nothing if it is not acting, it cannot be said really to exist at all then, as our description of it implies power in action. It is living only when it is active; then, I can have power and yet not be accomplishing anything, but I cannot have energy without doing something. This shows us very plainly the value of energy in the world. It takes up the power that there is in a man and turns it to account, makes it applied power, able to reach results. It stands midway between the force and the work, and brings them together by reaching out a hand to each. What can be comparable with this energy as a human possession? It creates money, it saves time, it carries out thought, it satisfies love. It is the engine which takes the steam of the boiler and gives it in activity to the waiting machinery of life to fill the world with finished products. The waste of such a thing as this, the greatest of the world's necessities, is most serious to contemplate, and our subject grows in magnitude as we proceed. The question of option in regard to it gives place to that of duty. The interests of the world are involved in the economy or waste of the energy of the individual.

And here we have discovered one great means of waste of this precious thing in what we have said. For we have seen that energy ceases to be when it ceases to act. Do we not perceive, then, what a loss of it may and does come constantly

from its non-use? Scientific men tell us that it takes an additional five per cent. of fuel to raise a body of water again to the boiling point when it has once been suffered to fall below it. How carefully should we consider, therefore, the causes which in any way may tend to diminish the use of a man's energy, and especially in his early life. The conditions of body and mind which prevail in him have a bearing on this important possession of his life, which we rarely stop to consider. The breakfast which he eats this morning and the exercise which he takes will have a large share in deciding whether he is to be energetic or not to-day. And we cannot say that that is all, and that each day's life is complete in itself, for we know that the wrong diet and habit of a man, continued day after day, have a cumulative effect upon his constitution, which steadily wastes all the energy that he originally possessed. And another cause, little thought of, is the neglect of educational advantages in early years, which, if faithfully acquired by study and reading, bring a man's mind into intelligent sympathy with the interests and needs of the world about him, and also take away that restraining self-distrust which keeps many a one from use of his best energies, and therefore the achievement of the best results, from lack of confidence in his powers. and abilities as compared with those of others. And, far deeper still, and more serious in their influence, are the faulty spiritual conditions which are suffered, ofttimes unconsciously, to grow up in our natures. Self-complacency, if indulged, tells a man before long to let well-enough alone, and not to exaggerate the need and requirement for action on his part in life. Jealousy, and its companion or cause, lack of love for others, shuts the energy of life off from its healthiest range of operation, and takes away its best motive. Finally, saddest of all the deadening influences in a human life, the root and spring, indeed, of these others, loss of faith in God, and consequently in man, for the last cannot exist without the first, absolutely kills out all energy by robbing it of its vital principle, belief in life of any kind as a reality at all.

But now to go on and think of the other form of waste of energy which comes from the misuse of it. This leads us straight to the thought of purpose in life, for the results of energy and not the mere employment of it is that wherein alone lies its value. An energetic person who is so only for the mere enjoyment of the physical or mental excitement of being so, however pleasurable that may be, is completely wasting his energy. And even if the emotion which moves the energy gets further with it and reaches some end, if that end be nevertheless unworthy of the employment of so great and precious a factor in the world's life, by reason of its being immoral as designed for the injury of the interests of some fellow man, or else narrow and selfish as concerned only in the welfare of the man himself, again we have a terrible waste of that energy for which every one who possesses it is accountable to God and the rest of mankind as joint owners with himself. It is in this idea of responsibility that we can alone arrive at any intelligent estimation of the real waste of energies in life. Unless we regard energy everywhere, in every shape in which it presents itself, and in every man in whom it is found, as a trust, and the use of it as a religion, it will be sure to be wasted, just as life itself in a vast number of cases is being unconsciously wasted every moment. Any energy which is not consecrated energy is thrown away and lost, however much it is used. And the saddest part of it is that it is not only lost, but (as waste, we have seen, always signifies) the man robs God, the world, and himself of it when he so uses it. All existence is dealt with dishonestly, and is the poorer for it. This is what makes this subject of vital moment in every life, and shows us the awful significance of wasted energies.

The Chains of Habit.

"T

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

HE Chains of habit" (from Latin habere, to have), i. e., "the chains of having." Having what? In civilized lands no person of sense speaks of there being such things as the chains of honesty, the chains of truth, the chains of purity, the chains of honor, the chains of righteousness; but they do speak of the chains of dishonesty, of falsehood, of vice, of dishonor, of sin. Why? Because each recognizes that the first are in strict accord with the best interests and the highest development of men, and so are not chains but are our natural belongings, and that the latter only debase and ruin man. From whatever source this knowledge may have come to them, whether by experience, or tradition, or revelation, they hold that to have the first of those things is to be free, and to have the last is to be a slave, and they have embodied that thought into both their language and their law.

We were designed for freedom. Slavery of the body was felt to be and is now recognized by all civilized nations as an abhorrent thing, not to be tolerated, but to be abolished. They will yet hold that slavery of mind is worse. The laws that govern the physical world are no more wise and immutable than are those governing the mental. In accord with the first the body was designed to take in foods, not poisons. Yet a man may so accustom his body to the use of the deadly and violent poisons of alcohol, of tobacco, of opium, etc., as to become in soul and body their most abject slave, and be led to commit the most atrocious crimes while under their influence,

or in order to obtain them. In such case, their fellows speak of them as being diseased, and the victims of the alcohol, tobacco, or opium habit, etc. First, they had the drink, or the tobacco, or the opium, or the lust of pleasure or of gold, and could have left them. Now the drink, the tobacco, the opium, the lust, the gold, have them and they are eternal slaves, and who shall deliver from that bondage?

So likewise the mind was designed for the knowledge of truth, and not error. Yet a man may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave, and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or to propagate it. The dungeon, the rack, the gibbet, and the stake, bear witness to this in earlier times, and the dynamite bomb of the anarchists in these modern days. But does truth, any more than virtue, need violence to propagate it, and make it flourish? Does not the use of violence disprove the claim to be either virtue or truth? A sober man does not commit the awful deeds that dehumanize the drunkard, nor will the man of truth persecute, torture, and kill his fellow men, to establish the truth. Truth never needs that.

How do men come to be drunkards, or slaves to the vices? Sometimes by inheritance-their parents before them being such; by dalliance with them; sometimes by education by another; more generally by forming the habit in childhood and youth, by sipping cider, wine, beer, etc. Acts repeated make habits. No man ever became a drunkard by one drink. It was keeping at it that at last made him a slave. And then how abject he is. Listen, while an ex-slave, John B. Gough, tells of it. "Oh, it is pitiful, it is pitiful-the appetite for intoxicating liquors when it becomes a master passion! one of the most fearful that man was ever subject to! And not only is it amongst the low, as we call them, and the illiterate; not only amongst those whose first words they heard were words of blasphemy, whose first words they uttered were words of cursing; but it also holds the man a slave who stands in front of the counter and pleads for drink: 'Give me drink. I will