on.
It is only in the details of execution that it fails.

4. A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a variation on
those already named. It is

THE VERY YOUNG MAN'S METHOD;

and the pure earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch
it. It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days of the
week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for marks. This,
with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place,
and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it
as before a private judgment bar.

This living by code was Franklin's method; and I suppose thousands
more could tell how they had hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in
locked-fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up to
shape their lives.

This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor. You
bear me witness that it fails. And it fails generally for very
matter-of-fact reasons--most likely because one day we forget the
rules.

All these methods that have been named--the self-sufficient method,
the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary
method--are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant,
and as they stand perfectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat,
that they must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they distract
attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result at
the expense of the perfect one. What that perfect method is we shall
now go on to ask.

I. THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION.

A formula, a receipt for Sanctification--can one seriously speak of
this mighty change as if the process were as definite as for the
production of so many volts of electricity?

It is impossible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical experiment succeed
infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance?
Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot
calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their
work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these
forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world's religion,
but the world's conundrum.

Where, then, shall one look for such a formula? Where one would look
for any formula--among the text-books. And if we turn to the
text-books of Christianity we shall find a formula for this problem as
clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences. If this simple
rule, moreover, be but fol