edgments, and shrink from pursuing them into
detail. We say vaguely, that in all we do we should
consecrate ourselves to God, and our own lips condemn
us; for which among us cares to learn the way to do it.
The devoir of a knight was understood in the courts of
chivalry, the lives of heroic men, pagan and Christian,
were once held up before the world as patterns
of detailed imitation; and now, when such ideals are
wanted more than ever, Protestantism unhappily stands
with a drawn sword on the threshold of the inquiry,
and tells us that it is impious. The law has been fulfilled
for us in condescension to our inherent worthlessness,
and our business is to appropriate another's righteousness,
and not, like Titans, to be scaling Heaven
by profane efforts of our own. Protestants, we know
very well, will cry out in tones loud enough at such a
representation of their doctrines. But we know also,
that unless men may feel a cheerful conviction that they
can do right if they try, that they can purify themselves,
can live noble and worthy lives, unless this is set before
them as the thing which they are to do, and can succeed
in doing, they will not waste their energies on what they
know beforehand will end in failure, and if they may
not live for God they will live for themselves.

And all this while the whole complex frame of society
is a meshwork of duty woven of living fibre, and the
condition of its remaining sound is, that every thread of
it of its own free energy shall do what it ought. The
penalties of duties neglected are to the full as terrible
as those of sins committed; more terrible perhaps,
because more palpable and sure. A lord of the land,
or an employer of labour, supposes that he has no duty
except to keep what he calls the commandments in his
own person, to go to church, and to do what he will
with his own,--and Irish famines follow, and trade
strikes, and chartisms, and Paris revolutions. We look
for a remedy in impossible legislative enactments, and
there is but one remedy which will avail, that the thing
which we call public opinion learn something of the
meaning of human nobleness, and demand some approximation
to it. As things are we have no idea of
what a human being ought to be. After the first
rudimental conditions we pass at once into meaningless
generalities; and with no knowledge to guide our
judgment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles;
we respect money, we respect rank, we respec