eans a calling, vocation, or known employment. In Knox's Essays, vol. i. page 234, we find an excellent paper on the choice of a profession, which that elegant writer concludes thus: "All the occupations of life (says he) are found to have their advantages and disadvantages admirably adapted to preserve the just equilibrium of happiness. This we may confidently assert, that whatever are the inconveniences of any of them, they are all preferable to a life of inaction; to that wretched listlessness, which is constrained to pursue pleasure as a business, and by rendering it the object of severe and unvaried attention, destroys its very essence."

Among the Romanists profession denotes the entering into a religious order, whereby a person offers himself to God by a vow of inviolably observing obedience, chastity, and poverty.