as these, is an unknown quantity. It may be only a dependent goodness.

Sometimes when a child thus nurtured grows into youth and comes at last into his inevitable independence, and his own true will appears, his parents are much surprised. Thus and thus he did when he could not help himself, but now he is revealed. The father and mother cannot understand how their son who was such a quiet and gentle lad at home, and whose marks for conduct were so good in the private school, can behave at college as if he had a devil. They are rather inclined to lay the blame upon the devil. But the probable reason for the difference is in the fact that the boy had only a dependent goodness. The obedience which he showed was of their imposing, not of his own choosing. They controlled him, but they did not educate him. They did not bring him up so that he freely and naturally and gladly preferred the good.

The difference between a dependent and an independent goodness is due only in part to the method of training. The method may be changed, and the child may be given his own choice earlier in life, and still the results may be disappointing. His parents or teachers may try the experiment of leaving him unwatched, and may find by experience that the experiment does not work. It may seem necessary to choose between dependent goodness and independent badness. And in the face of such a choice it may seem wise to choose goodness, under any conditions. There is also a feeling, which is fairly founded on human nature, that if a child can be kept good up to the age of ten or twelve, even by main force, there is a fair chance that he will stay good. The parable of the twig and the tree seems to apply: as the twig is bent so shall the tree be inclined. Not only, however, is the result uncertain, but there is a radical defect in the process.

Independent goodness, such as we desire for our children, proceeds not simply from custom but from motive. [An educative process is defective which provides no more than forms and precedents, and accomplishes no more than the formation of habits. The forms and precedents and habits are of avail only so long as the conditions remain unchanged. The youth thus educated is not competent to adjust himself to new conditions, nor is he secure against temptation. Temptation introduces at once a new situation with which he has not been accustomed to deal. He has been shielded against temptation. There is little within him which comes now to his rescue and reinforcement. Indeed, the fact that he has been in the habit of doing as those who are about him do, operates now to incline him to conform himself to new associates. The good habits gained him the approval of his parents, his teachers and his schoolmates; but now approval in the wholly different

situation in which he finds himself, will be gained by the bad habits. A dependent goodness will be easily supplanted by an equally dependent badness.

What is needed is a constant motive. The lad who can be trusted in the midst of temptation is not only accustomed to be good, but desires to be good. That is his own, honest, independent wish. That is his ideal. His tastes, his interest, and his will are all that way. In the curriculum of the home or of the school, in the learning of the lessons of life, he has graduated out of the class in which the text-book is the Commandments into the class in which the text-book is the Beatitudes.

The Commandments and the Beatitudes differ not only in the form of statement, wherein the old law is negative and the new is positive, but in the spirit which this change of form represents. The Commandments are prohibitions, but the Beatitudes are ideals. "See," cries the Master of the

Soul, "here is the excellent life, here is true happiness, here are the ideals of fine, strong, free manhood." Then one who has said to himself: "I must not turn to the right, I must not turn to the left, on I must go, one foot after the other, in this prescribed path," lifts up his eyes, and there are the shining hills, there is his goal, his destination, his haven, his great achievement. There is the place where he would be. And he says: "By the grace of God, I will attain that height." Thereafter, he journeys with a new purpose, a new hope and a new courage. He looks up and not down. He has a new motive.

This essential motive, this interior and sincere choice, is not effected by prohibition, or protection, or admonition, or by any instruction in ethics. The principles of ethics appeal to the understanding, and give support to prudence, but they are of slight avail against the misleadings of emotion. The only force which can persistently with