is certain, there can be no worthy character where we have
not established some right to respect ourselves. And this right must
be born and reared, not out of egotism, nor in religious professions,
but in the findings of a cultivated conscience on the motives and
actions of our everyday life. A man may have many things, and many
things pre-eminently worth having--but as a question of character, if
he have not the right to respect himself, that is the lack of the one
thing which is virtually the lack of all.

I have mentioned religious profession, and it is well to mark the
commonplace but important distinction there may be between religion and
our profession of it. Religion, while it is a possession of infinite
worth, may be of no worth to us so long as we know that we are keeping
back some part of the righteousness which is the backbone of any
religion worth the name. A man's religious beliefs and convictions are
his own business. They are between him and a higher tribunal than
ours. What he does concerns us; and what he does he is. It may take a
time to identify the true relation between the two, but our instinct
decides the question, long, it may be, before the actions appear to
justify the verdict of the instinct. Somehow we know through this
worth-discerning faculty whether a man is trying to be what we mean
when we speak of a good man.

I believe that human character is homogeneous. It is of one substance
and quality in each particular person. Untold mischief has been done
by excusing the unpardonable in a man, on the ground that in some other
directions he is a good man. If he is ill to live with in the home, or
is hard and overreaching in his business, if he willingly makes life
more difficult than it need be for others, this is conduct which is
character; and when it is found with a profession of religion, let the
man, who thus outrages religion, be anathema. But at the same time,
young people should not conclude too hastily that a man is a hypocrite
because he does some things they cannot reconcile with his profession.
A man may be a very faulty man, and yet be a genuinely good man. His
goodness does not excuse his faults, nor do his faults destroy his
claim to goodness. I have known many a son judge a father very
harshly, and find himself in after years glad to find a place of
repentance. If you would have less reason later on to call yourself a
fool, be told that as yet you are not the best j