themselves apparently harmless and trifling, are generally, if not always, bad, and tending to the deterioration of character. Our proneness to bad habits, and our difficulty in forming good. ones, has been too universally acknowledged and lamented by the good and wise of all ages, to need our insisting upon it here. But we believe that it may be in a great measure, at least, accounted for by the nature of habit and its mode of operation, without resorting to the fearful supposition of an inherent love of evil in the human heart. If we trace the greater number of bad habits to their origin, we find them to arise from the indulgence of desires and passions in themselves blameless, and even necessary to the preservation of individual and social existence, but becoming evil in their excess, and when yielded to against the voice of reason and conscience. We may instance the desire of property, which is the basis of every social edifice, and the wish to better our condition, to which we owe all the blessings of civilization, but which have both in their excess been the source of cupidity, inordinate ambition, and consequent crime. By the very conditions of our existence on earth, the objects which excite these passions are constantly and prominently forced upon our attention; a great part of our time is necessarily spent among them, and we are in constant danger of allowing them to engross the whole. The advantages of wealth are ever present to tempt us to cupidity; the trumpet voice of fame stirs us to ambition; luxury assails every sense and woos us to self-indulgence; the world spreads its gaudy toils around to lure us into "the madding crowd's ignoble strife." Need we seek for any other cause to explain why the passions, so continually excited, move the will more readily and frequently than those higher desires, the objects of which are unseen and spiritual, — and why bad habits are so easily formed, and too often lead to vice, and from vice to crime, ere we are aware that we have done more than indulge a natural and innocent inclination ?

Not so is it with virtuous habits. The motives and rewards of virtue lie remote from the realms of sense, in the regions of the unseen and the eternal, and ere it can discern them, the

mind must forcibly abstract itself from the obtrusive claims of visible and tangible objects. We may, indeed, passively admire virtue when brought before us, but to follow her requires an active exertion, a steady and continued effort, and thus true philosophy agrees with true religion, in declaring that the just must "live by faith and not by sight."

The difference between passive impressions and active exertion has also, apart from the consideration of influence upon character, an important bearing upon our happiness. Since repetition weakens passive impressions, those pleasures which consist entirely in their excitement must necessarily be the shortest lived. A perpetually stronger stimulus will be required to produce the same amount of enjoyment, till the power of enjoyment is itself worn out, and leaves nothing but the craving for excitement which can no longer be satisfied. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more deplorable state, unless it be that of the person forced to endure its evil effects in another, -doomed, as Madame de Maintenon expressed it, to the intolerable weariness of striving to amuse one who is no longer capable of being amused.

The pleasures arising from active pursuits, on the contrary, last as long as the power of exertion. This holds good even of bodily activity. Many a man of seventy enjoys the pleasures of the chase with the eagerness of a boy, whilst the mere sensualist of the same age is dead to every excitement. Still truer is it of those pursuits which call into activity the higher powers of the mind, and which, from their very nature, are inexhaustible, holding forth new and ever new treasures to excite and reward our labors. Even when our energies fail us for the pursuit, and the lamp of life burns low and dim, the spirit yet retains its freshness, and only folds its wings as it sinks towards its earthly grave, that it may spread them for a bolder and higher flight in the regions beyond.

Finally, it must never be forgotten that, whether consciously for good, or unconsciously for evil, the influence of habit is incessantly at work. Every day in which we neglect to make it minister to our improvement, ministers to our deterioration.

We cannot lessen its power, though we may bend it to our will, like the torrent which rushes past our dwelling, whose eternal flow of waters we cannot arrest, although we can so direct it as to make it the most efficient and indefatigable of ser

vants.

CHAPTER III.

METHOD.

ONE of the first and most important objects for which we require the power of habit, is the attainment of method. By method, we do not mean simply methodical habits in this or that particular, but the spirit of system pervading the mind, and regulating the whole of life, on a deliberate and well-ordered plan. This is the very foundation of self-education. When we begin to reflect on our own nature and faculties, on the purposes for which they are given in this world, and the indications they afford of the nature of a future existence, we are led to feel the necessity of systematic training to fit us for the fulfilment of our appointed task. The unity of purpose which connects the different phases of life, when life is viewed at once as a course of present duty and a school for a future and higher sphere of existence, presses upon us the necessity of method, to carry the same unity into our own aims and endeavors, and to make all the various circumstances and actions of life combine towards the attainment of its one great end, the fulfilment of God's purposes in our existence.

As system is the assemblage of many particulars in subordi nation to one common object or leading idea, so method is the order by which system is carried out, and various and often complicated means made to serve one common purpose. Method, in its more limited sense, may be said to consist in the regular observance of certain means to attain certain ends, and implies steady action upon a predetermined principle. In a more general view, it rises from mere regularity to harmony, from the pursuance of particular ends to the combination of

various ends into one general system of action, animated by one common principle.

Nature furnishes us with the most complete exemplification of method. In her works, so full of order and harmony, we see system within system, but in each smaller and most minute circle the same method in the working out of results as in the greatest, the construction of an insect's wing evincing the combination of means towards a definite object as plainly as the movements of the planets. The objects may differ in magnitude and importance, they may appeal to higher feelings and more powerfully affect the imagination, but the principle of order runs through all alike, and imparts to nature that harmony and consequent grandeur of aspect which impresses the mind so irresistibly with the sense of an invisible but all-pervading Power. And as we contemplate it, we feel compelled to believe in the existence of some yet wider system, of which that which we see forms but a part, only one, perhaps, of the infinite methods employed in carrying out ends too vast to be apprehended by human intellect. The lesson thus learnt from the study of God's works should be applied to our own modes of action, and the same principle of well-ordered method should run through our life, from those high interests reaching far beyond our sight into the veiled regions of eternity, down to each small detail of daily duty. It is amongst the latter that we shall find the school for method, which may thence be carried up into a wider sphere.

We all know that some degree of arrangement is necessary in every scheme; for unless the means employed · - whether many or few, simple or complicated - be duly combined towards the proposed end, they will neutralize or destroy each other. Method, then, implying deliberate arrangement in the use of means, and steady advance towards a definite point, must be the very essence of every well-grounded plan; that in which the nature of a plan consists; and to attempt the accomplishment of any design without it is the act of one who is so far an irrational creature that he is incapable of understanding the adaptation of means to ends. Let the number of under