A SERMON, BY REV. A. C. NICKERSON,
EXETER, N. H.

Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.-Eccl. xii, 13.

There are in our large cities some significant straws called Ethical Culture Societies. The people who support them are very sincere and upright and charitable. The societies are few and far apart, but their very existence, taken together with their quality, is significant of a felt need. Mr. Adler, Mr. Salter, Mr. Weston, and the rest are persuaded that, notwithstanding Christianity, society as a whole is not moral and that the need of our time is ethical culture. Success to them in their work, say we. When an inflammation of the lungs has shown itself in an individual, we wish the doctor success who addresses his skill to the special aberration of the hour. And we who address ourselves to the whole body of Christ, who believe the work of religion to be not for a day but for all time, must frankly acknowledge the warning as from faithful watchmen on Zion's walls, and, recognizing the fevered condition as located in a vital part of humanity, move ourselves to its correction. Unitarian proclivity to "good works" has been alternately our taunt and our pride through many years; but without personal integrity even benevolence is tainted. The noblest giver gives himself. The Christian gospels would be weak without Christ.

The

The very fact that society has advanced to an active piety toward God and man makes the offence of dishonesty the more flagrant, as a sin against light. There is certainly a decided

though times are better and moral standards higher than ever before. Even so in a battle the colors may be way to the front and the commander's urgent voice unusually dominant and yet the rank and file be decimated with bullets and craven with fears. The generations of man are simply countless, and yet the animal in him is dangerously assertive to-day. Oh, earnestly, with that huge, physical bulk behind the broad browed face, the sphinx asks its question. With a significance the centaur still prances in our everyday almanacs. The sphinx first looked out, wondering, from all the wisdom and splendor of Egyptian civilization. We say, "Who shall deliver us from the body of this death?" crying out of our unprecedented prosperity and our so-called great advance in knowledge. And the world, as a whole, German lust for power, Russian implacability, Austrian "blot in the scutcheon," Spanish morals (or rather lack of morals) in high places, French Napoleonic flitter, English greed, fashionable society throughout the civilized world, trade plastic like wax to take any shape, diplomacy busied with external fences and defences,-what is there in all this to help men in fearing God! While peculiarly fortunate, America is peculiarly unfortunate. We get, in our amalgamated nation, the drift of the whole world's worldliness. The motives which were nimble in the forefather's blood are crushed to the wall by hordes of every tongue and clime who come here for money, ease, a good time, not counting the considerable refuse who make the spawning quarters of crime. Then there is necessarily in a land yet so new a mental strain all

over the country, incident to getting established, which drafts largely upon the strictly limited capital of nerve fibre available for moral resistance.

We must all face the fact that in our time and land some traits of life, ordinarily called virtues, may be snares for our personal characters. The popular motto, When in Rome one must do as Romans do, must be used cautiously. Patriotism, as interest in the country, labor for the party we favor, enthusiasm over our growth and influence, may appear commendable; but if to one solitary man the itching for preferment usurps the place of disinterested principle, if the zeal for party burns into fiery injustice to opponents and the bounty we have from God is perverted to condone coarseness, flippancy and sensual dominance, then, leaving the country one side, the man himself has become dishonest with his own soul. He lifts the flag of a good cause, but he stabs its true friends in the dark. Casca was not a whit less accountable to his own conscience because Brutus led on to the murder of Cæsar. The blackness of Peter's betrayal was not at all lightened by the apostacy of Judas.

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Good fellowship may be a snare. is that, if its easy morals make you forgetful of other dues, unfaithful to former obligations, irresolute within. You. smile at addle-pated ducks seduced to their destruction by decoys. How is it when you shift the conviction that an honest man promptly pays his debts, to that easy negligence which adapts itself to the world by the cultivation of a good digestion and a hard heart; how, when youth's bright faiths sink to make way for what you call less visionary and more practical appetites and passions; how, when your will, which held the helm of a good motive, deserts to paddle in the muddy cove of indulgence? We say of the poor ducks that their brains get blown out.

Men even make profession of a liberality in religion an excuse for misdeeds. Neither a cup nor a soul can be any more than full. The principles of any true faith, if followed out, are enough to fill one's desires. If we find

ourselves holding opinions which are tolerant of moral obliquities, we may be sure we have spilled the sacramental wine of good faith to make room for them. Whatever one's theological belief, if he is a true man, he does not parley over the right use of time, money, influence, or the wrongfulness of cynicism, sensuality, and falsehood. All sorts of questionable characters and occupations have in every age followed the army corps. In the advanced brigades of the war against evil, men do not find themselves free of such camp followers, who seek their protection and countenance.

Men are to be honest with themselves. Golden words are those of Shakespeare:

"to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man."

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The God of men, when they first began to be, created us; and the best of us would have been at home morally with the most upright Egyptians, because they lived as our noblest live, up to the obligation of the best they knew. We are in poise, also, with the most truthful Hindus to-day because their sense of what is morally clean, fraternally dutiful, and consistently right, we find at bottom one with our own. the solidity and whiteness of one's morality he is one with God and with all men every where. The open secret of the fraternities of virtue give the handclasp and the heart room in every land. The members of the brotherhood are everywhere. In going in to our inmost selves and vindicating and sustaining our vows there, we are compacting our ties with good men all about us. All over the earth men agree that an honest man, a frank, a just man, is the noblest work of God. Sincerity with one's self is a bond, insincerity within, a dissolution, although men believe the reverse only too often and act on their belief. It is against all law that a breakage at the center of things shall insure a perfect connection with all outside circles. Nature's way is not alone the reverse, but, if there is no flaw at the center, ruptures outside are more quickly discoverable and more easily healed.