Norwich bulletin., 1915-04-24

Cwritten Specially for The Bulletin.)
 Occasionally we hear some one speak of an ''old-fashioned virtue."
 It's an unfortunate phrase. For no real virtue ever gets out of date or becomes 'told-fashioned". The moral laws of the universe are quite as inn mutable as its material laws. They change not with seasons or centuries. Nor are they capable of suspension, temporarily, to meet the desires of either an individual or of the race. That a man shall reap what he sows is exactly as true of a wild oats' crop as of a wheat crop. That sweet sins shall come to cruel recompense" is exactly as certain as that water will run down hill.
 Nevertheless, unfortunate though the phrase may be, it describes a sit uation that exists. If not literally and textually correct at least it has a certain picturesqueness which makes 1.-the phraSe,-Sttck in, the memory and trip off the tongue.
 No virtue is old fashioned" in the sight of Eternal Truth, and none is ''old-fashioned" before the scales of Eternal Justice. We shall make a sor- ry mistake if we think any one is. We shall be laying up for ourselves much trouble and sorrow and loss if we act on the assumption that any one is.
 Just the same, whole lot of us, sometimes, big majority of us, think that very thought and act on that very assumption.
 The times change, as we all know. wherefore we argue that we must, or ct least may change with them. Which is absolutely and exactly true, so far as methods and systems are in- volved. Which is never either true or even plausible so far as principles and laws are concerned.
 The first water-wheel was an "un- dershot". Later, it was discovered that an "overshot" wheel would give later, the turbine was found to do better yet. But all these changes were based on no change in the law of gravity, which commands that all free water shall seek it's level. They were based merely on the discovery of better methods for securing the help of that unvarying and invariaible law. The laws of the moral universe are just as certain as those of the phys acal But, because they work slowly countably, a whole lot of us get the Idea that some of them have stopped working or can, perhaps, be circum- vented. When one of these moral ed tets gets in the way of our greed or our slothfulness and we ignore or defy IL 4Ol d LCW years W1lIOuI 1dl- ally killed" in consequence, we leap to the conclusion either that it has been overcome by our superior ~smart- pess", or that it has gone out of com mission,-has become "old-fashioned and out of date.
 Just at present, the virtues of eeon- ony and self-helpfulness are appar- ently, considered by vast number of people to be in this class. The idea that the way to secure a competence was by earning and saving, has, truly, become +old-fashioned". It's too slow for the younger. on-coming generation, anyway. They take no stock in the theory that it is well to go without Somepleasures, now, in order to insure comforts later on. They want to 'malze'' money, not earn it. They have no idea of saving 1t. They sim ply .snigger if you suggest the ancient saying that one can't have his cake and eat it, too. both at the same time They intend to use all they can get, now, right off, this minute, and ex- poet to have somebody see to it that