cious in the eyes of truth and virtue. Jesus did not swear, and he commanded us to "swear not at all," but to let our "yea be yea," and our "nay be nay." Peter, perhaps, persuaded the profane mob which crucified his Lord, that he did not know him by means of cursing and swearing; but his profanity on this occasion casts the blackest shadow which ever fell over his life and reputation. The best and mightiest men who ever spoke or wrote for the world did not swear, and the world receives their words with an emphasis which profanity would have forever destroyed. Truth and virtue, wisdom and philosophy, morality and religion, honor and integrity, speak for themselves; and the simple word of an honest man is his oath and his bond. Think of a book or a newspaper or a letter interspersed with the emphasis of profane swearing! How would the President's message read full of cursing and swearing? Who would not loathe a public speaker whose eloquence and oratory sparkled and corruscated with the electric glare of profane oaths? And yet how often does the chaste and polished speaker leave the rostrum to curse and swear in conversation! If profanity is good in one place, why not in another? It may be said that taste forbids profanity in writing and speaking for the public. True, but the very same reason makes it an odious, base, and brutal habit everywhere else. Of all the habits in the world it has no place for use or profit anywhere.

What volumes does profanity write for every day of the world's history! Millions of pages go to press under the recording angel's pen every hour. This monstrous and multitudinous sin outstrips all other vices for quantity, if not for quality. Millions of tongues from every spot of earth perpetually spin

out their sticky threads of profanity which, like a monster spider, winds and weaves its web around the world, and into which every thing good and bad is caught and impaled by his barbed fangs. What a voluminous record does profanity set down against mankind every day! Vile, sacrilegious, blasphemous profanity! A man calls upon God to damn his neighbor and himself, to damn his wife and his children, to damn his houses and his lands, to damn his horsesand his cattle, to damn his business and his profession, to damn his misfortunes, afflictions, and his troubles-all in malice and rage; and then, in fun and pleasantry, in the name of God, he curses his friends and his acquaintances, his pleasures and happiness, his prosperity and his advancements, his honor and his fame, every good thing he enjoys and hopes for. Some he damns to hell, some to misfortune and misery, some to one thing and some to another; and "hell and damnation," mixed up with the name of "Almighty God," are familiar words upon the lips of millions every day and hour. The profane swearer lives in the atmosphere of blue blazes and sulphuric stench and spectral darts and harsh noises and grating echoes, flashing, fuming, smoking, fulminating, and reverberating every moment through the existence and associations of some people. Some people begin and end almost every sentence, besides interspersing it,. with oaths; and, conscious or unconscious, voluntary or involuntary, their every vital breath seems to be burdened with the profanation of God's name and barbed with the malediction of some object or victim.

Young people, be sure that God will hold you to account for this great and hideous sin. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." He will

not hold him guiltless that takes his holy name in vain. Learn to abhor this vile and wicked habit. Loathe it as low, base, and obscene. Think of what Washington, the father of your country, said of it: "The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it." Learn, in the language of another writer: "There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking and swearing any other than braying?" Profanity is certainly an asinine as well as a vile and wicked habit, and no other ass, with loud as well as foul mouth, walks and brays the earth with greater stupidity than the victim of this vice. One of the greatest of asses is the cursing and the swearing ass, to say nothing of his depravity.

THE SULKS.

(HE accompanying illustration to this sketch represents Achilles sulking in his tent and Ulysses protesting against his course of folly. The thought is taken rather from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida than from Homer, and I gave the lecture in order to get to elaborate one splendid passage from the great poet, which is never quoted at length. It is found in Scene III., Act III., and, well read and appropriated, it is worth millions of gold to a large part of this world. I want to quote it at length. Ulysses to Achilles:

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons

That one by one pursue: if you give way,

Or edge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,