ed,
His thoughts and words were well agreed;
His word, his bond and seal."
INSCRIPTION ON BARON STEIN'S TOMB.

DUTY is a thing that is due, and must be paid by every man who would
avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an
obligation--a debt--which can only be discharged by voluntary effort and
resolute action in the affairs of life.

Duty embraces man's whole existence. It begins in the home, where there
is the duty which children owe to their parents on the one hand, and
the duty which parents owe to their children on the other. There are, in
like manner, the respective duties of husbands and wives, of masters
and servants; while outside the home there are the duties which men
and women owe to each other as friends and neighbours, as employers and
employed, as governors and governed.

"Render, therefore," says St. Paul, "to all their dues: tribute to whom
tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom
honour. Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth
another hath fulfilled the law,"

Thus duty rounds the whole of life, from our entrance into it until
our exit from it--duty to superiors, duty to inferiors, and duty to
equals--duty to man, and duty to God. Wherever there is power to use
or to direct, there is duty. For we are but as stewards, appointed to
employ the means entrusted to us for our own and for others' good.

The abiding sense of duty is the very crown of character. It is
the upholding law of man in his highest attitudes. Without it, the
individual totters and falls before the first puff of adversity or
temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and full
of courage. "Duty," says Mrs. Jameson, "is the cement which binds
the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power, goodness,
intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence; but
all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves
us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own
desolation."

Duty is based upon a sense of justice--justice inspired by love, which
is the most perfect form of goodness. Duty is not a sentiment, but a
principle pervading the life: and it exhibits itself in conduct and in
acts, which are mainly determined by man's conscience and freewill.

The voice of conscience speaks in duty done; and without its regulating
and controlling inf