hold, the many, in their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and
misinterpret.

So far of Respectability; what the Covenanters used to call 'rank
conformity': the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on
men. And now of Profit. And this doctrine is perhaps the more
redoubtable, because it harms all sorts of men; not only the heroic
and self-reliant, but the obedient, cowlike squadrons. A man, by
this doctrine, looks to consequences at the second, or third, or
fiftieth turn. He chooses his end, and for that, with wily turns
and through a great sea of tedium, steers this mortal bark. There
may be political wisdom in such a view; but I am persuaded there
can spring no great moral zeal. To look thus obliquely upon life
is the very recipe for moral slumber. Our intention and endeavour
should be directed, not on some vague end of money or applause,
which shall come to us by a ricochet in a month or a year, or
twenty years, but on the act itself; not on the approval of others,
but on the rightness of that act. At every instant, at every step
in life, the point has to be decided, our soul has to be saved,
heaven has to be gained or lost. At every step our spirits must
applaud, at every step we must set down the foot and sound the
trumpet. 'This have I done,' we must say; 'right or wrong, this
have I done, in unfeigned honour of intention, as to myself and
God.' The profit of every act should be this, that it was right
for us to do it. Any other profit than that, if it involved a
kingdom or the woman I love, ought, if I were God's upright
soldier, to leave me untempted.

It is the mark of what we call a righteous decision, that it is
made directly and for its own sake. The whole man, mind and body,