severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

"His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, like the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence."

Let the reader mark, in these two pictures, the important lesson, that all the attributes of human character are only means to an end. Decision, invaluable and indispensable as it is to the accomplishment of every great and noble purpose, may be possessed and used only as an additional power for evil. It may be thrown away, as in the instance cited, on a profitless accumulation of misemployed wealth, or it may be abused as an engine for the larger accomplishment of vicious plans, and the practice of crimes against both God and man. How sad, and, indeed, terrible, is the thought that God has endowed man with capacities

for the noblest ends, but which are too often perverted to the service of the devil; capacities which might have won the distinction of a Howard, moving about on his mission of love, among the wretched and depraved, like an angel of mercy treading in the footsteps of the divine Redeemer, but which too often serve rather to accelerate the degradation of their possessors even to such misery as that to which Howard ministered the charities of a lifetime. The uneducated, indeed, the neglected and the orphaned outcasts of society, are too frequently those who occupy our prison cells, and crowd our penal settlements, and for this society is not irresponsible. Yet also it is the naturally gifted that excel in vice no less than in the career of industry and honour, and thousands have gone down to the felon's grave, who, treading in the paths of virtue, might have won honour and distinction among the noble and gifted, or shared in the fortunes of the most prosperous devotees of commerce and trade.

Taking this view of the forms of virtue and vice which so affect the two extremes of society, it becomes an important, no less than an interesting subject of inquiry, to ascertain how it is that the path of integrity and uprightness is so frequently abandoned for the downward road. On this subject, Dr. Chalmers has remarked that one grand key to the whole may be found in that simple but most comprehensive maxim of our Saviour: "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much." This may be regarded as the golden maxim on which sound integrity depends. All other principles of rectitude, save that which makes no distinctions apart from the essen

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tial rectitude of the action, are vain. We must aim at judging of all our actions by the Divine law of rectitude, and not by that of mere human expediency. "Man is ever prone," says Dr. Chalmers, "to estimate the enormity of injustice by the degree in which he suffers from it. He brings this moral question to the standard of his own interest. A master will bear with all the lesser liberties of his servants, so long as he feels them to be harmless; and it is not till he is awakened to the apprehension of personal injury from the amount or frequency of the embezzlements, that his moral indignation is at all sensibly awakened. And thus it is, that the maxim of our great Teacher of righteousness seems to be very much unfelt or forgotten in society. Unfaithfulness in that which is little, and unfaithfulness in that which is much, are very far from being regarded as they were by him under the same aspect of criminality. If there be no great hurt, it is felt that there is no great harm. The innocence of a dishonest freedom in respect of morality, is rated by its insignificance in respect of matter. The margin which separates the right from the wrong is remorselessly trodden under foot, so long as each makes only a minute and gentle encroachment beyond the landmark of his neighbour's territory. On this subject there is a loose and popular estimate, which is not at one with the deliverance of the New Testament ; a habit of petty invasion on the side of aggressors, which is scarcely felt by them to be at all iniquitous-and even on the part of those who are thus made free with there is a habit of loose and careless toleration. There is, in fact, a negligence or a dormancy of principle among men, which causes this sort of injustice to be easily practised on the

one side, and as easily put up with on the other; and, in a general slackness of observation, is this virtue, in its strictness and in its delicacy, completely overborne."

In this view are involved many important results. The integrity of the master, in a thousand cases, begets that of his dependants; while a low standard of morality, which will, for gain, tempt a servant to neglect the Sabbath, to slight the strict rules of honest dealing, to overreach or deceive, is the hot-bed of vice, which not infrequently reaps its own punishment, while entailing disgrace and misery on others, and doing incalculable injury to society at large. The highest principle is the only true principle, which makes God's unalterable rectitude, and his unyielding law, the sole standard in the very least, as in the greatest actions of life. The eminent Divine already quoted, thus pictures the true man of honour. "Whatever his forbearance to others, he could not suffer the slightest blot o corruption upon any doings of his own. He cannot be satisfied with any thing short of the very last jot and tittle of the requirements of equity being fulfilled. He not merely shares in the revolt of the general world against such outrageous departures from the rule of right, as would carry in their train the ruin of acquaintances or the distress of families. Such is the delicacy of the principle within him, that he could not have peace under the consciousness even of the minutest and least discoverable violation. He looks fully and fearlessly at the whole account which justice has against him; and he cannot rest, so long as there is a single article unmet, or a single demand unsatisfied. If, in any transaction of his, there was so much as a farthing of secret and injurious reservation on his side, this would be

to him like on accursed thing, which marred the character of the whole proceeding, and spread over it such an aspect of evil, as to offend and to disturb him. He could not bear the whisperings of his own heart, if it told him, that, in so much as by one iota of defect, he had balanced the matter unfairly between himself and the unconscious individual with whom he deals. It would lie a burden upon his mind to hurt and to make him unhappy, till the opportunity of explanation had come round, and he had obtained ease to his conscience, by acquitting himself to the full of all his obligations. It is justice in the uprightness of her attitude; it is justice in the onwardness of her path; it is justice disdaining every advantage that would tempt her, by ever so little, to the right or to the left; it is justice spurning the littleness of each paltry enticement away from her, and maintaining herself, without deviation, in a track so purely rectilineal, that even the most jealous and microscopic eye could not find in it the slighest aberration: this is the justice set forth by our great moral Teacher."

In truth there lies no middle ground between right and wrong. The law of God recognises no venial sins. It was because his justice demanded the fulfilment of the minutest jot and tittle, that divine mercy could alone provide an escape for the sinner, by providing the great sinless sacrifice of the new covenant. This, then, is the integrity which must be looked upon as one of the most essential elements of success in life, a principle which looks ever upward for guidance, and allows no inducement of self-interest to tempt it from the narrow path, either to the right hand or the left.

Mr. Roscoe, well known as the biographer of the De