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BV 4520 .B2 1862 

Bacon, Leonard, 1802-1881. 

Christian self-culture 




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CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE ; 



COUNSELS FOR THE BEGINNING AND 
PROGRESS OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



/ 
By LEONARD "^BACON, 

Pastor of the First Church in New Haven, 




Published by the 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
* 28 Comhill, Boston. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

The American Tract Society, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTTPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHiON. 



I INSCRIBE 

2rj)is Volume 

TO MY BELOVED PEOPLE OF THE FIRST CHURCH AND 
ECCLESIASTICAL SOCIETY IN NEW HAVEN, 

GBATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR UNWEARIED KINDNESS TO 

ME, AND IN THE HOPE THAT FROM THESE PAGES I MAY 

SPEAK TO THEM AND TO THEIR CHILDREN AVHEN 

MY VOICK SHALL BE SILENT. 

LEONARD BACON. 



PEEFACE. 



The author of this book has had a long experience 
in the ministry of the gospel. As he looks back to 
the time when he entered on that ministry, and in- 
quires of himself what progress he has made in the 
knowledge of the gospel, he finds that in nothing 
has the habit of his mind undergone a greater 
change than in his sense of the freedom with 
which he may offes salvation to men in the name of 
Christ. Year after year, without becoming conscious 
of any deviation from those views of Christian doc- 
trine which are commonly recognized as "evangeli- 
cal," he has been acquiring a more enlarged and un- 
embarrassed conception of the gospel as opening a 
way in which any man who will can be saved. Sure- 
ly, if there is any first principle in Christianity, which 
is to be held at all hazards, and which no theological 
system or theory may be permitted to darken, it is 
the principle that salvation from sin, and from the 
death which is the wages of sin, is offered, frankly 
and without equivocation, to all men. 



vi PREFACE. 

This book, therefore, regards the beginning and 
progress of the Christian Hfe from that point of view 
to which the author has been brought by his experi- 
ence in the ministry of the gospel, as well as by his 
study of the Scriptures. It assumes that in the case 
of every reader, whoever he may be, the beginning 
of a new life is possible by the grace of God in 
Christ. It assumes that every man may avail him- 
self of all those offers and promises which the gospel 
sets before him, — may accept and appropriate the 
offered forgiveness of sins, — may act on the assur- 
ance that God is willing to give the Holy Spirit in 
answer to prayer, — may confidently trust in Christ's 
presence and friendship, — may immediately under- 
take to follow Christ, striving to overcome his own 
selfish and unbelieving habits, and hoping to get the 
victory. Therefore, it offers to the reader, not a psy- 
chological explanation of the change which takes place 
in conversion, nor any metaphysical disquisition about 
the will, but only some practical counsels for the be- 
ginning and progress of a Christian life. If it is to 
do any good, it must be read, not for theological 
speculation and discussion, nor with the expectation 
tliat it will produce its effect by some impression on 
the feelings, but for the practical purpose of Christian 
self-culture. 



PREFACE. vii 

It should not be forgotten that in this ' book the 
Christian life is considered only in one aspect. The 
Christian life is the life of one who, at the call of 
God, under the mediation and leadership of Christ, 
and in reliance on the promise of the Holy Spirit, 
has undertaken to be a new creature in Christ, to 
be progressively transformed by the renewing of his 
mind, to train himself in and for the service of God, 
and so to make the most of himself as a living soul 
whose chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him 
for ever. Considered in this aspect, it is Christian 
self-culture. Considered in another aspect, it is Chris- 
tian experience ; and in that aspect it has often been 
described and analyzed with careful discrimination 
between the genuine and the false. Let not this 
book, because it treats only of Christian self-culture, 
be considered as denying or doubting the reality of 
Christian experience. Christian self-culture, ear- 
nestly undertaken in reliance on the grace of God, 
and diligently pursued, will involve in its progress 
all that is essential to a full experience of the gos- 
pel as a quickening and transforming power. 

"With these explanations, the author sends forth 
his work upon its errand, praying, and asking the 
prayers of others, that God's blessing may attend the 
reading of it. 



CONTENTS. 



— ^— 

OHAP. PAQB 

I. The Beginning 11 

II. When to Begin 31 

III. Integrity and Amiableness as related 

TO A Religious Life . . . .47 

IV. Faith and Manliness . . . . 67 
V. Enlightened Conscientiousness . . 89 

YI. Freedom Self-governed . . . Ill 

VII. Steadfastness 133 

VIII. Godliness 153 

IX. Brotherly Kindness . . . .175 

X. Charity 195 

XI. Christian Growth 215 

Xn. Fruitfulness 237 



CHAPTER I. 



THE BEGINNING 



" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
me : for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
light." Matt. xi. 28-30. 

" Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day 
of salvation." 2 Cor. vi. 2. 

" It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judg- 
ment." Heb. ix. 27. 

" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For 
he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; 
but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap hfe 
everlasting. Gal. vi. 7, 8. 

'' Know ye not that they which run in a race, run all, but 
one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain. And 
every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all 
things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown ; but 
we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; 
so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." 1 Cor. ix. 24-26. 

" Exercise thyself unto godliness." 1 Tim. iv. 7. 

" I can do all things through Christ which strengthcneth 
me." Philip, iv. 13. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BEGINNING. 

The desigti of this book. What are you in your own con- 
sciousness ? You are a living soul. Your destiny can not be 
completed in this life. Your faculties are proof that you 
were made for a free and intelligent service of God. You 
are capable of unlimited progress. Connection between the pres- 
ent and the future. Now or never you must be trained for 
your hereafter. Difficulties and disadvantages. Power of sin. 
Encouragement. Offers and hopes presented in the gospel. 
Nature of the Christian self discipline. It is a discipline in 
duty, aided by the means of grace. 

A TRULY religious life is often represented in 
the Scriptures as a life of self-discipline and self- 
culture. Viewed in this aspect, a really Chris- 
tian life is the life of one who, under the influ- 
ence of Christian views and motives, and in the 
use of those means and helps which God has 
given him in giving him the gospel, is striving 
to make the most of himself for the ends for 
which he w^as created, and to bring himself into 



14 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

the highest possible conformity to the will and 
the image of God. Thus the Apostle Paul de- 
scribes the Christian life, and particularly his 
own life as a Christian man, in words and im- 
ages borrowed from the discipline by which the 
candidates for prizes in the athletic games of 
Greece were exercised and trained to their ut- 
most capability of bodily activity and power. 
Thus, too, he charges his friend and former pu- 
pil, Timothy, "Exercise thyself unto godliness." 
In other words, train thyself, by a religious dis- 
cipline, to the knowledge and service of God. 
A man who has set his heart upon winning the 
prize in the Olympian or the Isthmian games 
trains himself to that end ; he goes daily into 
the gymnasium, to leap, to run, to wrestle, to 
develop and cultivate the power of his muscles 
by every sort of practice ; so " exercise thyself 
unto godliness." 

Reader, this book is designed to help you in 
beginning and pursuing a Christian life. It is 
designed to help you by persuasion and by friend- 
ly counsel. The religion which it commends to 
you is not merely the intellectual reception of a 



THE BEGINNING. 15 

certain doctrinal scheme ; nor is it merely an 
experience of excited feeling ; it is a life, a 
thoughtful and earnest way of living, a life of 
self-discipline. A religious life is not a life of 
forms, or of outward proprieties and moralities; 
it is the interior life of a soul training itself and 
developing its own nature aright, — a soul hum- 
bly, yet with resolute diligence, educating its 
own moral and spiritual faculties into conform- 
ity with truth and with God. Think, as you 
read, that a friend is speaking to you. I wish 
to bring home to your thoughts the reasonable- 
ness, the duty, the necessity of such a life. I 
am to make you understand, if I can, what is a 
truly religious life, and what it is to be a relig- 
ious man, religion being viewed under the form 
of Christian self-culture. Allow me thus to help 
you, if I can, in beginning such a life. And 
may God help me while I write, and help you 
when you read. 

We begin, then, with this question : Have you 
ever considered what you aref In order to any 
right understanding of the subject, or any con- 
scious interest in it, you must be willing to think 



16 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

and to turn your thought upon youself. You 
must reflect ; for serious thought turned inward 
is reflection. You must reflect on the nature, 
the capabilities, and the future of your own 
existence ; on your faculties of thought and will, 
and your capacity of progress ; on the career for 
which you were created, and to which your pow- 
ers and capabilities, as a living soul, are adapted. 
What are you? Are you an animal, merely, 
with some few faculties that give you the advan- 
tage over other animals ; while they, in their 
turn, have in some other respects the advantage 
over you ? If so, eat and drink, for to-morrow 
you die. But you start back from such a con- 
clusion ; you know that you differ from the no- 
blest of brutes, not in degree, not by those in- 
cidents and circumstances merely that constitute 
variety, but In kind. These limbs and organs 
of yours, this material body and its parts and 
members, are yours, indeed ; but they are not 
yourself You are, in your own consciousness, 
a living spirit, reasonable, voluntary, determining 
your own course and character. Inferior crea- 
tures are bound by laws which they know not, 



THE BEGINNING. 17 

and can not resist ; but you are bound by laws 
which speak through your reason to your vol- 
untary nature, and which you resist or obey at 
your option. You can perceive and grasp truth, 
— not merely the phenomena that strike your 
senses as they strike the senses of inferior crea- 
tures, — but truth. You can perceive truths in- 
visible, truths infinite, truths necessary and eter- 
nal. You can perceive not merely colors, forms, 
and distances, as inferior creatures see them, but 
beauty and grandeur spread like a vail of light 
over all the creation of God. You can perceive 
not merely pleasure and pain, consequent in vari- 
ous degrees on various acts ; but obligation, duty, 
the right and the wrong, with the beauty of the 
one and the hatefulness of the other. Your hu- 
man body — the frail thing that eats, drinks, 
sleeps, is weary and sick, decays and is resolved 
into dust — how small a part is it of yourself ! 
You., in your consciousness and personality, are 
something else than the organization through 
which you are in communication with material 
nature. Your heing is that which thinks, rea- 
sons, knows, inquires, believes, remembers, im- 
2 



\S CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

agines, loves, hates, hopes, fears, determines, re- 
flects, approves, condemns, rejoices, repents. You 
are a living spirit, created in the likeness of God, 
created for freedom and responsibility. Have you 
ever considered, thoughtfully, what you are ? 

Think again. Can such an existence as yours 
accomplish all its destiny in this short course of 
mortal life? You were created for more than 
this. There was an hour when you began to 
be ; but when will you cease to be ? Death, 
indeed, is at hand ; there will soon be a great 
change in your condition, and none can ade- 
quately tell you what that change will be ; but 
the instinct of immortality witliin you constrains 
you to look forth into the infinite future with 
expectation that will not be suppressed. This 
mortal life, under this material organization, is 
Qn]y the beginning of your history, — a history that 
will have no end. Have you ever thought of 
this ? Think of it now. Think what it is to 
be a living soul, rational, responsible, immortal. 

Let your soul thus rouse itself from its unre- 
flective habit to the consciousness of what you 
are, and another view will open to your thoughts. 



THE BEGINNING. 19 

For what were you made with these capabilities 
and facuhies ? The world is full of life, and full 
of the manifested power and skill and love of 
its Creator ; but, of all the living creatures that 
you see, you only, and your fellow-men, are ca- 
pable of knowing God. Other creatures do his 
will ignorantly and involuntarily ; you are capa- 
ble of rendering to him — or of withholding from 
him — an intelligent and willing service. This, 
then, is what you were made for, — to know 
God, to behold with adoring acknowledgment 
his manifestations of himself, to commune with 
him in thought and action, to be his willing ser- 
vant and his loving child, and to be blessed in 
his service and his love. If you were made for 
this, as your consciousness assures you that you 
were, then to this you must be trained, — to this 
your character must be formed, — or you miss 
the " end and aim " for which you came into 
existence. 

Think also (for just here it is natural for you 
to think of it) what your progress may be in 
the future. Take away the limits which are in- 
separable from the present condition of the soul, 



20 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

bounded on every side by the grossness and the 
frailty of this material organization, and what 
limit can be set to the progress which you shall 
hereafter make in knowledge, in the intensity 
of love or hate, and in the capacity of blessed- 
ness or wretchedness ? With what a treasm-e, 
then, are you embarked upon the sea of exist- 
ence ; and how important is it that your soul 
be so trained and disciplined as to secure this 
infinite treasure ! 

Having led you to these reflections on your 
own nature, with its marvelous powers and ca- 
pabilities, I now propose another question : Have 
you ever considered^ with due ihoughtfulness^ ivhat 
connection tliere may he between your ^:??'esen^ life 
and your life hereafter ? Think how far your 
soul's well-being after death may be dependent 
on what your soul shall have become before 
death. 

I am not asking you to occupy your mind 
with useless conjectures, or with inferences from 
doubtful speculations. We have a sure word of 
prophecy. God has given us intelligible certain- 
ties. Now is the accepted time. After death is 



THE BEGINNING. 21 

the judgment. Every one shall receive accord- 
ing to that he hath done in the body. You are 
now sowing that of which you will reap the in- 
finite harvest hereafter ; and what a man soweth 
that shall he also reap ; he that soweth to the 
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he 
that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap 
life everlasting. This life is your probation. All 
is involved in the result of it. The character 
which your soul shall bear in the sight of God, 
at your departure from this mortal life, will deter- 
mine your course^ and destiny in the immortal 
life to come. Now or never your soul must be 
formed, by fit culture, for the love and service 
of God, as its chief end and its immortal blessed- 
ness. Let this opportunity be wasted, — let your 
soul pass through this period of probation unedu- 
cated, undisciplined in God's service, unfitted for 
that high career to which its faculties and its 
capacities were destined, — and when, in all 
the cycles of eternity, will you find one oppor- 
tunity to repair the infinite waste ? 

And here another question presents itself: 
Have you ever considered how much has been aU 



22 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

ready lost, and under what difficulties and disad- 
vantages the training of your soul, for its immor- 
tal life of duty and of blessedness, must he begun f 
The fact of your apostasy from God, and of the 
effects which sin has ah'eady produced upon your 
spiritual nature, is a most material fact in the 
problem of that moral and spiritual self-culture 
to which you are invited. 

In the education of your soul for the immor- 
tal love and service of God, you have not only 
every thing to learn, but every thing to unlearn. 
You must cease to do evil, or you can not learn 
to do well ; and this necessity of ceasing to do 
evil is what makes the task of learning to do 
well so difficult. You are under the power of 
habits, long-established and confirmed, which it 
must be the first effort of a rehgious self-disci- 
pline to break up and dislodge. From your ear- 
liest remembrance of yourself, you have been 
governed, consciously or unconsciously, by pro- 
pensities which must be resisted and subdued. 
This is not a trivial accident which has befallen 
you, and which the better forces of your nature 
may be expected to throw off by their spon- 



THE BEGINNING. 2^ 

taneous workino;. You know there is nothing; 
trivial or transient in the corruption which has 
taken hold of your spiritual nature, and has de- 
graded you so far below what you ought to be^ 
and so far below what you must yet become, 
unless your soul is wrecked for ever. Our pres- 
ent purpose does not require us to enter into 
any speculative explanations of the fact ; — the 
fact itself is what concerns us now. The self- 
discipline to which you are invited is not mere- 
ly to train the powers, and to unfold and direct 
the pure susceptibilities of an unfallen spirit. 
It is a remedial discipline, dealing with an apos- 
tate soul. It is a discipline designed and con- 
ducted for the recovery of a sinful soul ; aiming 
to humble it, to renew it, to purify it, to set it 
free from its bondage, to transform it into the 
resemblance of God's holiness, and thus to make 
it fit for the inheritance of the saints in light. 
Or, rather, it is the life-long labor of such a soul, 
led by the grace of God to struggle for its own 
deliverance, to work out its own salvation with 
fear and trembling, to purify itself by obeying 
the truth through the Spirit, to exercise itself 



24 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

unto godliness. How important is it, then, to 
you that this remedial discipline be undertaken 
without delay, and be maintained with ceaseless 
diligence to the end. 

Here the question comes : Is there any possi- 
hility, any reasonable Tiope^ of success in such an 
attempt? In answer to this question, I com- 
mend to your attention and yout confidence the 
grace of God that is offered in the gospel. 

The gospel of Christ does not merely propose 
the reward of eternal blessedness to those who 
are worthy of such an inheritance ; its grace is 
far ampler and richer than that. Read what 
the Saviour says : " If ye continue in my words, 
then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." Hear him inviting you : " Come to me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden — take my 
yoke upon you and learn of me." The gospel 
is rich with promises like these, by which we 
may escape the corruption that is in the world, 
and may be made partakers of the Divine na- 
ture. (2 Pet. i. 4.) It reveals not only heaven 
for the holy, but also (what is much more per- 



THE BEGINNING. 25 

tinent to our case) pardon for the guilty. It 
reveals not only God the Judge of all, but also 
Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant. Nor 
is this all ; for, with the atoning Saviour, it also 
reveals and offers a renewing Spirit. To the 
believer in Christ, not only is there no more 
condemnation (Rom. viii. 1), but old things are 
passed away and all things are become new 
(2 Cor. vi. IT) ; and, notwithstanding that cor- 
ruption of his nature which sin has caused, he 
may learn to say, with humble assurance, " I 
can do all things through Christ which strength- 
eneth me." 

To you, then, the assurance is offered, that 
if you will come to God in Christ for pardon 
and grace, — if you will come, humbling your- 
self and repenting and asking for the Holy 
Spirit, — you may undertake this course of self- 
discipline for immortal holiness with a confident 
hope of success. The gospel, with all its grace, 
is set before you expressly for this end, that 
you may be persuaded and enabled and en- 
couraged to exercise yourself now in the ser- 
vice of God, and so to train yourself for that 



26 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

higher and perfect service of God, which will 
employ for ever the perfected spirits of the just. 

I will now presume that you are ready to ask 
for yourself, Wliat is the self-discipline to which 
I am invited? What are the processes and 
methods, what the means and helps, of this spir- 
itual self-training ? 

Understand, then, that the discipline to which 
you are summoned is the discipline of duty, of 
voluntary subjection to truth, of holiness, of 
the service of God. Just that service of God 
to which you are called in this world, what- 
ever your particular field of service may he, as 
determined by your place and your relations in 
society — that service, whatever it may be, which 
the providence of God allots to you — a service 
which you are to perform in the face of innu- 
merable temptations, and which involves a per- 
petual conflict with whatever is perverse in your 
own habits and inclinations — that service of God, 
in your place and calling, is itself the most ma- 
terial part of the discipline by which you are to 
be trained for a higher ministry hereafter. By 
all those daily duties, then, and all those daily 



THE BEGINNING. 27 

cares, in which God would have you serve him. 
and your fellow-men, you are to be trained and 
exercised unto godliness. He who, whether he eats 
or drinks, or whatever he does, strives to do all to 
the glory of God — he who, in any sphere of toil, 
from the loftiest to the lowliest, learns to do all 
things heartily to the Lord and not to men — is 
training himself effectually for immortal virtue. 

Subsidiary to this discipline of daily duty, 
there are the various means of grace^ — the means 
by which the soul is led and assisted in the per- 
formance of duty and in the culture of holy af- 
fections and habits. You know what these means 
of grace are. There is prayer, — by which the 
soul comes into immediate communion with God, 
and receives immediately from him a quickening 
influence. By prayer you can exercise yourself 
to godliness. There is the religious duty of re- 
flection in order to self-knowledge ; the devo- 
tional exercise of communing with your own 
heart, and inquiring into your own habits and 
condition before God, so that by growing more 
and more acquainted with yourself, you may 
grow in humility and penitence. In this way, 



28 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

you are to exercise yourself to godliness. Tliere 
is also the exercise of an habitual watchfulness 
against temptation, — the habit of observing one's 
own weaknesses and spiritual dangers, and of 
keeping guard against them. By this you are 
to discipline and train your soul till you are al- 
ways on your guard, incapable of a surprise. 
Need I insist on the right use of times and sea- 
sons, and of all special opportunities for cultivat- 
ing those affections in which the soul has fellow- 
ship with God ? Whenever any thing occurs that 
quickens your religious sensibilities, — any thing 
that brings God, eternity, heaven, near to your 
thoughts and feelings, — then is a time in which, 
if you will use the opportunity aright, you may 
effectually discipline your soul to godliness. And 
with all these, yet distinct from them all, there 
is that special intercourse with God which you 
may have in the devout and teachable study of 
his word ; there is the house of God ; there is 
the fellowship of those who love God, and who 
walk by faith. In the use of all these means 
of grace., you are to train yourself to the bless- 
edness of serving God in love for ever. 



THE BEGINNING. 29 

Such is the discipline of jour own spiritual 
faculties and capabilities, to which religion calls 
you. Such are the modes and processes by which 
you are to exercise yourself to godliness. Think, 
now, what sort of a discipline this is. Is it any 
thing servile ? Is there any degradation in being 
subject to it? Is there any thing in it that you 
need be afraid of? Is it any thing else than the 
highest and noblest culture of your spiritual and 
immortal nature ? To be without such disci- 
pline — to be left under the power of the 
habits and tendencies which this discipline pro- 
poses to resist and overcome — that is bondage ; 
that is degradation ; that is the soul's wretched- 
ness and ruin. The great author and finisher of 
this discipline, the Divine Revealer of its prom- 
ises and hopes, will make you free. " Come un- 
to me," he says, " all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke 
upon you, and learn of me : for I am meek and 
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your 
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
light." 

Reader! have you entered upon this course 



30 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

of self-discipline, under the guidance of Christ ? 
Have you — reflecting on the nature, the capaci- 
ties and the destiny of your own soul, realizing 
the relations which connect this ti'ansient life 
with the infinite hereafter, remembering the fact 
of your apostasy and alienation from God, and 
trusting in the offered grace of the gospel — be-, 
gun with earnest and resolute purpose to exer- 
cise yourself to godliness? Are you daily prac- 
ticing this self-discipline, watchfully, diligently, 
and in the believing spirit of dependence on 
Christ ? 

If you have not yet begun, why should you 
not begin to-day? 



CHAPTER II. 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 



" Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom 
of God." John iii. 3. 

" Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to 
me, except the Father who hath sent me draw him. . . . 
Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the 
Father, cometh to me." John vi. 43, 45. 

" If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." 2 Cor. 
v. 17. 

" This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Clirist Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 1 
Tim. i. 3. 

" The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared 
to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly 
lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this 
present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious 
appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who 
gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, 
and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." 
Tit. ii. 11-14. 

" Having therefore these promises, let us cleanse ourselves 
from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in 
the fear of God." 2 Cor. vii. 1. 



CHAPTER II. 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 



A common excuse. Mistakes about conversion. The mis- 
take of thinking that you must make some preparation. The 
mistake of thinking that you must not trust in Christ till you 
feel that you have been converted. The mistake of thinking 
that after conversion every thing will be easy. How the Chris- 
tian life really begins. Will you make this beginning now 1 

It has been shown that the gospel invites you 
to a life of moral and spiritual self-discipline in 
preparation for the life to come. But you, per- 
haps, excuse yourself by saying that a Christian 
life must begin with being born again. You tell 
me, perhaps, that all counsels and persuasions in 
reference to a Christian life are properly addressed 
to the converted ; and that you, inasmuch as you 
have had no experience of the great change in 
wdiich a Christian life begins, have no present 
concern in the subject which I am commending 
to your attention. 



34 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

Let us, then, look this difficulty fairly in the 
face, and see what becomes of your excuse. I 
would by no means intimate that there is no dif- 
ficulty in your way, nor that your conversion 
from a thoughtless and selfish life to a life of 
humble and earnest preparation for eternity is 
dependent simply on your sovereign volition. I 
would by no means lessen your sense of your de- 
pendence on God for those merciful influences of 
his, under which so great a change in you must 
be effected. But may it not be that you have 
taken up some erroneous conception of what that 
change is which the Scriptures call a being born 
again ? May it not be, that if you will deliber- 
ately and fairly reconsider what the gospel re- 
quires of you, and what it offers you, and will 
cease to resist the influences w^hich at this mo- 
ment are working within you and moving you to 
a decision, you will see and feel the fallacy of 
your excuse ? It may help you to understand 
yourself, and the nature and extent of your re- 
sponsibility for your own well-being, if I succeed 
in explaining to you some of the common mis- 
takes about conversion. Let us inquire a little 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 35 

into your theory about the beginning of a Chris- 
tian life. 

Perhaps you have fallen into the habit of sup- 
posing that your conversion to Christ, and your 
privilege of appropriating as your own the offers 
and promises which are set before you in his 
name, must be the result of some preparatory 
work on your part. I shall not argue with you 
on this point. What more need I say than that 
such a habit of mind contradicts and excludes the 
first right conception of the gospel ? Why do 
you need Christ ? Your need is that without 
him you are helpless. The simplest and most 
comprehensive statement of the gospel is that 
" Christ Jesus came into the w^orld to save sin- 
ners." If you were now just what Saul of Tar- 
sus was when he was on his way from Jerusalem 
to Damascus, the first thing for you to do, at the 
moment of coming to yourself, would be — not 
a preparation for conversion, but conversion it- 
self — not a getting yourself ready for coming to 
Christ, but an actual turning to Christ, with that 
question of a submissive and confiding soul, 
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " If 



36 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

yon were at tills hour tlie guiltiest of men in the 
sight of God, the first thing for you to do would 
be not to establish a new character as a prepara- 
tion for trusting in Christ, but to trust in Christ 
in order to your becoming a new creature. Re- 
member what the true idea of the gospel is. It 
is God's way of saving men from their sins. It 
is God's revealed method of turning men to him- 
self, and of training them in this world for im- 
mortal activity and blessedness in the world to 
come. 

Just here another mistake sometimes occurs to 
hinder the beginning of the Christian life. Per- 
haps you are in the habit of thinking that the 
consciousness of a great change wrought within 
you by the power of God must precede your act 
of trusting in Christ. Some such theory of con- 
version is sometimes deduced, indistinctly, or 
even unconsciously, from the necessity of being 
born again. The promises and hopes of the 
gospel, it is said, are only for those who have 
been born again, and not for the unregenerate 
or unconverted. " The work of saving me from 
my sins," it is said, "is God's work and not 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 37 

mine ; how, then, am I to begin unless I am first 
assured that God has begun his savino; work with- 
in me, — how can I claim and appropriate the 
Christian hope of emancipation from sin, and of 
victory over it, — how can I enter upon the Chris- 
tian life of self-discipline for immortal holiness, — 
unless I am conscious in some way that God has 
called me, and that I am born ao-ain ? " * 

The answer to all this is that you are mistaken 
in your theory of how God works in renewing 
and saving men. If you will suffer yourself to 
be taught by the Holy Scriptures, you will find 
that they give no support to such a theory. 
Where or how do the Scriptures teach that you 
must be born again before you accept the par- 
don and the grace which God is offering you ? 
They teach you, indeed, that " if any man be 
in Christ he is a new creature ; " but they do 
not teach that any man becomes a new creature 
while he is out of Christ, — still less, that his 
being in Christ is because he became a new 
creature while he was yet out of Christ. They 
teach, indeed, that " except a man be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God;" but they 



38 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

do not teach that any man is born again, or can 
be, before he accepts the gospel as his hope, and 
trusts in Christ as the power that is to save him, 
■ — still less that he must have the consciousness 
that he is born again before he can believe in 
the Saviour of sinners. Christ, indeed, teaches 
you, "No man can come to me, except the Fa- 
ther whidi hath sent me draw him ; " but he 
does not teach you that the Father is not at 
this moment drawing you, nor that you must 
wait for any new consciousness before you ac- 
cept the hopes and promises which the gospel 
offers. On the contrary, the Scriptures are full 
of a very opposite sort of doctrine, inviting you 
and all men to be saved ; warning you against 
the peril of neglecting so great salvation ; and 
urging you to work out your salvation, for the 
reason that it is God who is working in you to 
will to do. 

This error, in regard to the beginning of the 
Christian life, is closely related to another. Per- 
haps your theory supposes not only that tlie 
consciousness of a great change wrought witliin 
you by the power of God must go before, in- 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 89 

stead of following, your personal confidence in 
Christ as a Saviour for you, but also that the 
change which you are waiting for will take away 
the necessity of further effort and conflict in the 
Christian life. Perhaps the theory which you 
have indistinctly and unthinkingly adopted, con- 
cerning the work of God in drawing you to 
Christ and making you a new creature, implies 
that, after you have once passed through that 
change, your progress in the new life will be, 
not by thoughtful and resolute diligence, — 
not by struggles against temptation and the force 
of old habits, — not by intelligent aspiration and 
strenuous endeavor, — but by mere propensity, 
like the propensity to selfishness and unbelief 
to which you have heretofore yielded the domin- 
ion over your soul. I apprehend that few mis- 
takes in regard to the change at the beginning 
of a Christian life are more common than this 
among those who, having been taught in some 
form of sound words the great and true doctrine 
of regeneration and sanctification by the grace 
of God, have accepted that doctrine in a mere- 
ly traditionary way, instead of deriving it di- 



40 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

rectly from the Scriptures. They find that now 
they are worldly, selfish, and thoughtless, with- 
out effort, — that they are carried along by mere 
propensity, — that they are borne as it were 
•upon a mighty current ; and they heedlessly 
presume that, if ever they are born again, the 
current will be reversed, as in a change of tide, 
— the propensity will incline the other way, as 
the inclination of the scale-beam changes with 
the shifting of the weights, — and that a life of 
faith and prayer and holy love will be as easy 
as a worldly life now is. Surely I need not 
remind any thoughtful soul how contrary all this 
is to the whole course of God's teaching in his 
recorded word. You know well enough, if yoii 
will remember what you know, that the begin- 
ning of a Christian life, — the change which 
takes place in conversion when God draws the 
soul to Christ, — the change which takes place 
when the man is born again and becomes a 
citizen in the kingdom of God, — is not after 
such a fashion. The being born again, — the 
coming to Christ, — the conversion of the soul 
to God, — the becoming a new creature, — the 



WHEN TO BEGIN, 41 

great transition from death in trespasses and sins 
to a new and spiritual life, — is the beginning 
of a life-long conflict with inward propensities, 
as well as with outward temptations. 

Think, then, what that life is to which the 
gospel invites you, and you will have a clearer 
knowledge of what the beginning of that life 
must be. All the words and images by which 
the greatness of that change is represented to 
you, or by which God's mercy in bringing that 
change to pass is commended to your humble 
and grateful adoration, will become alike intel- 
ligible and impressive, when you remember dis- 
tinctly what sort of a life it is to which the 
gospel calls you. Just remember that the gos- 
pel calls you to a life of humble, praying, and 
constant self-discipline, under the guidance of 
God's word and with his promised help, pre- 
paring you for immortal well-doing and well- 
being in the life to come ; and you will liardly 
fail to see what ^ the beginning of such a life 
must be. Remember that such a life must 
needs be a life of free obedience to the will of 
God, and of earnest self-denial for tlie sake of 



42 CHEISTIAK SELF-CULTURE. 

pleasing him, — a life of conflict with temptation 
and of resolute watchfulness, — a life of trusting 
dependence on Christ and of habitual looking 
for help in time of need, — a life of practical 
love to God testified by the doing of his will, 
and of practical love to men testified by doing 
good, — a life, therefore, of progress by God's 
blessing on your diligence in the face of obsta- 
cles and under the consciousness of infirmity. 
Can you not see, with the offers and promises 
of the gospel before you, what you are to do, 
and what is wanting in your case to the com- 
mencement of such a life ? 

Just this is wanting in your case, — not some 
preparation for beginning such a life, but sim- 
ply a beginning, — not some preparation that 
shall make it possible for you to lay hold on 
the hope set before you, or that shall make it 
right for you to do so, but simply that you ac- 
cept the mercy and help which God offers you. 
That new life to which Christ calls you begins 
with believing that he calls you. It begins 
with a practical confidence in that way of be- 
ing saved which the gospel opens before you. 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 43 

It begins with simply trusting in that " faith- 
ful saying and worthy of all acceptation^ that 
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin- 
ners," — just such sinners as you are. It be- 
gins, therefore, with what we call coming to 
Christ, — that is, with the act of accepting him, 
leaning upon him, trusting in him that he is 
and will be all that the gospel testifies concern- 
ing him. Christ has come to you, and is wait- 
ing before you, as a Saviour from sin by expi- 
ation and free forgiveness. You can do nothing 
for yourself, nor can he do any thing more for 
you, unless you trust in him. He has come to 
you, and is waiting before you as a teacher and 
guide ; and his promise is that he will be with 
you always in the presence of the Holy Spirit. 
Do you not see, then, what it is to begin that 
life to which the gospel is inviting you ? Do 
you not see that, while you wait for some prep- 
aration, which you mistakenly call conversion, — 
or which you hope to achieve by your own en- 
deavors, — while you hesitate about committing 
yourself, just as you are, to the divine offer of 
salvation, just as you find that offer in the gos- 
pel, — you are really "neglecting the great sal- 



44 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

vation," and are resisting the Holy Spirit? Do 
you not see that there is, and can be, no other 
way for you to begin than by trusting God's 
" exceeding great and precious promises " of for- 
giveness, of help in the conflict with sin, and 
of final victory and deliverance ? Such a be- 
ginning of the Christian life is conversion. This 
is what we mean when we talk of coming to 
Christ, and this is what Christ himself means 
when he bids you come to him. He who thus 
comes to Christ is thenceforth " in Christ," and 
is, therefore, " a new creature." The question 
is before you, whether you will commit j^our- 
self frankly to the grace of God in Christ, and 
in that confidence undertake, with full purpose 
of heart, the sublime work of self-discipline for 
an immortal life of blessedness in the love and 
service of God. 

You begin when you "flee for refuge to lay 
hold upon the hope set before you." You be- 
gin when your heart yields to the force of that 
argument : " Having therefore these promises, 
let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the 
flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness, in the fear 
of the Lord." 



WHEN TO BEGIN. 45 

Have you made that beginning ? If you have 
not, will you begin to-day? Come, then, for 
there is no real hinderance. Come, without wait- 
ing. Now let the blessed covenant which God 
in Christ offers to make with you be established 
for ever. You are alone with God ; kneel be- 
fore him, and say, not with your lips only, but 
with all your heart, — 

" God be merciful to me a sinner ! O God, 
most holy, thou hast been merciful to me. 
Thou hast met me a great way off, and hast 
called me to return and be at peace with thee. 
Behold what manner of love the Father hath 
bestowed on me, that I should be numbered 
with the sons of God ! Lord, I believe ; help 
thou mine unbelief ! Needy and guilty as I 
am, I come to thy mercy-seat, that I may take 
the offered mercy, and may find grace to help 
in time of need. I come to lay hold on the 
hope set before me. O God, who art in Christ, 
reconciling the world to thyself, I come to 
thee ! O Lamb of God that takest away the 
sin of the world, be thou in me the hope of 



46 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

glory ! To whom can I go but to thee, for thou 
only hast the words of eternal life. Let me sit 
at thy feet, henceforth, receiving and obeying 
all thy words, and trusting in thy power to 
save. Henceforth be my life a continued con- 
flict with my own infirmities, with the tempta- 
tions that surround me, with the evil that dwells 
within me. O God, that forgivest my sins, 
give me the victory! Let it be my experience, 
as it is now my humble confidence, that I can 
do all things through Christ who strengtheneth 
me ! Thou who art not willing that any should 
perish, and who givest the Holy Spirit to them 
that ask thee, here am I in my unworthiness 
and helplessness; I present myself, a living 
sacrifice to thee. Trusting in thy offers and 
promises, I covenant with thee that I will be 
no more conformed to this world, and that I 
will give all diligence to be transformed by the 
renewing of my mind, and so to prove in'my 
experience what is thy good and perfect and 
acceptable will that leads me to repentance. 
Work thou in me of thy good pleasure, while 
I work out my salvation with fear and trem- 
bling ! " 



CHAPTER m. 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS RELATED 
TO A RELIGIOUS LIFE. 



"Provide things honest in the sight of all men." Eom. 
xii. 17. 

"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are hon- 
est, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report ; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, tliink 
on these things." Phil. iv. 8. 



CHAPTER III. 

INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS RELATED TO A 
RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Religion without goodness. A truly Christian man is the 
better for his religion, — more worthy of love and confidence in 
all the relations of society. The culture of the secular virtues 
is one part of the Christian self-culture. How these virtues are 
to he cultivated. Difference in this respect between the be- 
liever in Christ and the unbeliever. 

A RELIGIOUS life is sometimes supposed, 
strangely enough, to be quite reconcilable with 
a most disagreeable deficiency of those social and 
secular virtues which may exist without the inspi- 
ration of Christian faith. Doubtless those men 
who think that mere good-nature, or the graceful 
play and impulse of natural affections, or the 
merely secular morality which makes an agreeable 
neighbor and a wholesome member of society, is 
an all-sufficient substitute for religion — fall into a 
fatal error. But, on the other hand, those who 
4 



50 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

make religion an all-sufficient substitute for the 
many estimable and amiable qualities of which an 
unregenerate man is capable, and who, therefore, 
undertake to be religious men without undertak- 
ing to be good men, are equally mistaken. There 
is no religious delusion more gross than that of men 
who expect to be saved by a religiousness which 
cares nothing for the things which are " honest," 
— estimable, or becoming — "in the sight of all 
men." 

No reader of the Scriptures can fail to observe 
how often the apostles, in their letters to " saints 
and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus," urge them 
to cultivate those ordinary human virtues which 
the moral sense of all men honors, and of which 
there may be beautiful examples among men who 
know nothing of Christ, or who, having heard of 
Christ, do not believe in him. The thing to be 
observed is not that amenity of temper and of man- 
ners, or an irreproachable morality in social and 
civil relations, is represented as a necessary pre- 
liminary to the reconciliation of the soul with God ; 
but that the believer in Christ, putting on Christ's 
likeness, and exercising himself unto godliness, can 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 51 

not neglect these ordinary human virtues. Any 
man, however unamiable in his natural temper, 
and however great his need of moral reformation 
in order to his being loved or respected among 
men, may undertake to follow Christ in the con- 
fiding hope that, by the grace of God, he shall attain 
a perfect salvation ; and his undertaking thus to 
follow Christ is just what is meant by beheving in 
Christ. But if he does thus undertake, he com- 
mits himself, intelligently and with all his heart, to 
become " a new creature " — new in respect to 
whatsoever things are " beautiful in the sight of all 
men," — new in respect to whatsoever things in 
human conduct are true or honest or just or pure 
or lovely or of good report, — as well as in respect 
to spiritual exercises and experiences. 

Assuming, then, that you to whom I am speaking 
from this page have undertaken, or are in the act 
of undertaking thus to follow Christ, I have some 
things to say about this particular side or aspect 
of the Christian life. What I say will have no 
other purpose than to help you in a life of faith 
and of devout and spiritual self-discipline. 

First, then, let this be distinctly understood. 



52 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

The interior life of the man who follows Christ 
must have, for one of its manifestations, that charac- 
ter of integrity and amiableness in social and civil 
relations which the common moral sense of men 
instinctively honors. A naturally amiable temper, 
a good education, and the power of merely secular 
motives, may indeed go far towards forming such 
a character ; and often a man fortunately consti- 
tuted by nature, brought up under salutary re- 
straints and influences, and accustomed to cherish 
every honorable and amiable impulse, may be 
greatly l)eloved and honored without any inward 
experience of the gospel as a renewing power. 
But if rehgion — that is, the power of the gospel 
applied by the Holy Spirit to renew the heart in 
holiness — does not find the man already formed 
to such a character, it must reform him, — and it 
"will. He in whom the religion which he professes 
to have experienced does not thus manifest itself, 
— he in whom the Spirit of grace and holiness 
does not actually produce these ordinary human 
virtues, — lacks an essential part of the character 
which belono-s to a renewed and relio;ious man. 
Whatever else he may have, this deficiency vitiates 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 5B 

his pretensions and forbids his hopes. He in 
whose outward Hfe there is not, in consequence 
of his rehgious experience, more of whatsoever 
things are true, — that is, who is not manifestly 
more to be trusted and depended on in every 
relation, — is a deceiver. He in whose out- 
ward life there is not, in consequence of his 
following Christ, more of whatsoever things are 
serious and dignified, — that is, who is not more 
sure to rise above what is trifling and low, — is a 
deceiver. He in whose outward life there is not, 
in consequence of his reconciliation to God, more 
of whatsoever things are just, — that is who is not 
more inflexibly upright in his intercourse with men, 
— is a deceiver. He in whose life there is not, in 
consequence of his being bom again, more of what- 
soever things are pure, — that is, whose words and 
actions do not indicate a growing purity of thou§}it 
and feeling, — is a deceiver. He whose life does 
not exhibit, in consequence of the work of the 
Holy Spirit upon his soul, more of whatsoever 
things are lovely, — that is, who is not more 
amiable, more gentle, more patient, more kind, or 
who has not more of that which wins and fixes the 



54 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

affectionate regard of those with whom he has to 
do, — is a deceiver. He in whose life there is not, 
in consequence of his emancipation from bondao-e 
to sin, more of whatsoever things are of good re- 
port, — that is whose outward Hfe does not exhibit, 
on the whole, more of those qualities which com- 
mand the approving testimony of men's moral 
sense, — is a deceiver. All this is -too plain to 
need any argument. 

But we may take a higher and wider view of 
the connection between the interior life of Chris- 
tian faith and the cultivation of these ordinary 
human virtues. The culture of the secular and 
social virtues, — the habitual study to acquire those 
moral qualities which are " beautiful in the sight 
of all men," and to acquire them, not for the sake 
of the secular advantages which attend them, but 
for their own sake, — is no unimportant part of 
the soul's self-discipline for immortality. A truly 
Christian life — a life inspired and guided by the 
knowledge of Christ — is the life of a redeemed 
soul educating and training itself for God's service 
here, and for that boundless existence to which it 
is destined hereafter. Reorardiua; rehgion in this 

o o o 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 55 

light, we may say that the conscientious cultiva- 
tion of these moral qualities and habits, being a 
part of religion, is a part of the soul's self-discipline 
for immortality. 

It is not to be assumed that these qualities and 
habits, because they are in some sense a natural 
outgrowth of the new life within, will therefore 
come spontaneously and of course. A voluntary 
diligence, — a conscientious watchfulness of effort, 
— is necessary to the formation of a character that 
shall exhibit and illustrate all that is true and 
dignified and just and pure and lovely and of 
good report. " If there be any virtue, and if 
there be any praise, think on these things." If 
virtue itself is any thing more than an empty 
name, — if tlie distinction between that which the 
moral sense approves and praises and that which 
it condemns and abhors is any thing more than a 
dream, — "think on these things." Think on 
them, — that is, more accurately, hold them in 
estimation ; reckon them at their real worth. In 
other words, seek for these traits of character; 
make them your study and pursuit ; cultivate them 
as of mestimable value. If you would be fully 



56 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

qualified for the service of God in this life, — if 
you would be prepared for that higher career of 
service to which he calls you in the life to come, 
— cultivate these virtues. 

But you ask, perhaps, what connection is there 
between the culture of these secular virtues, and 
of these affections that have their sphere and being 
only in the present life, and the discipline of my 
soul for the higher career of its immortality ? So 
have I known a thoughtless boy refusing to be- 
lieve that the discipline and instruction of the 
school had any connection with his being prepared 
for the career which he was destined to run in 
the years of his manhood. The Author of our 
immortal nature has placed us here for a while, 
in his own wisdom, and in the prosecution of the 
ends for which he gave us being; and here, in 
this brief span of life, we must be educated for 
an immortal career of holiness, or else we must 
go to our eternity, at the end, unfitted, and with 
an account to give of life misspent and blessed 
opportunities and privileges abused. Of the life 
to come we know little beyond the fact that it 
is, and that its course, whether of endless and joy 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 57 

fill advaucement in purity, love, and blessedness, 
or of endless darkness and despair, is to be deter- 
mined by the results of this preparatory stage of 
being. But of this present life, we know that, in 
one way or another, all the elements and condi- 
tions of it are ordered and combined by infinite 
wisdom, with reference to that life to come. We 
know that, however duty here may differ in its 
details from duty hereafter, these duties here, — 
all of them, — the duties which grow out of rela- 
tions soon to be dissolved, — the duties which have 
respect to interests transient in their nature, — 
are duties not less really than the duties which 
have respect immediately and exclusively to God, 
and which grow directly out of our relations to 
him ; and that, if performed as duties^ tliey may 
be the best of all methods for disciplining the 
soul, and training it into fitness for the perform- 
ance of higher, yet analogous and kindred duties, 
in eternity. For example ; the relation of prop- 
erty or possession may not exist hereafter in any 
form in which we can now conceive of it; but 
how easy is it to understand that the duties grow- 
ing out of this relation here, disciplining the soul to 



58 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

justice, to self-denial, to industry, to beneficence, 
may be essential as a preparatoiy discipline for the 
exercise of the same generic virtues in duties and 
relations now unknown and unconceived. For 
another example ; the daily household duties that 
press upon us, in the homely and humble form 
of care and toil for bodily supports and comforts, — 
the father and mother feeding the children, cloth- 
ing them, guarding them from danger, ministering 
to them in sickness, — may be quite unknown 
hereafter. We may even imagine that, among the 
members of one family on earth, there will be in 
eternity no mutual dependence, no relation of 
peculiar duties and affections ; but who can not see 
that, even in such a case, the love, the j^atience, 
the gentleness, the confidence, and the gratitude, 
which are learned, or ought to be learned in the 
family, and in the performance of the humblest 
family labor, may be of incalculable importance as 
a part of the soul's education for the exercise of 
the same virtues in relations of which we have 
now no conception, but to which our approaching 
change will introduce us. 

Remember, then, that the devout and habitual 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 59 

culture of all these secular virtues — domestic, 
social, and civil — is essential to the soul's self-j 
discipline for the immortal life to come. 

Here we come to a view still more practical. 
How is such a character to be formed and culti- 
vated ? How may I promote in myself the growth 
of whatever in human affection and conduct is 
true, and whatever is noble, and whatever is just, 
and whatever is pure, and whatever is amiable 
and attractive, and whatever is of good report? 
The answer to this question divides itself into two 
parts, neither of which is complete by itself. 

First, the character in question may be culti- 
vated by cultivating the constitutional sensibilities 
on which it depends. These sensibilities are nat- 
ural to all men, not indeed in the same degree, 
but in various degrees ; and in all men they may 
be cultivated, or they may be suppressed. There 
is in all men, for example, a natural sensibility to 
whatsoever things are true, — a sensibility which 
is the foundation of the virtue of mutual fidehty 
among men. There is a sensibility in your na- 
ture, prompting you to fulfill your engagements. 
Whatever you know that your dependents, your 



60 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

friends, your fellow -men in whatever relation, 
may reasonably expect of you, — that the sensibil- 
ity I speak of prompts you to do. ' The sensibil- 
ity may be stronger in you, naturally, than it is in 
some men ; it may be weaker than it is in some 
other men ; but, in one degree or another, it is an 
element of your constitution, and of the constitu- 
tion of every human being. This sensibility may 
be cultivated and developed, till it shall move as 
with the precision and force of an instinct; and, 
on the other hand, it may be resisted, kept under, 
and suppressed, till you shall become almost un- 
conscious of it. In like manner, (to take another 
example,) you are so constituted by the Author 
of your nature that you feel yourself moved — 
not irresistibly impelled, but moved — to whatso- 
ever things are amiable, kind, and winning. All 
men have, naturally, the same feeling, not in the 
same degree, but in various degrees, according to 
the individual peculiarities with which they are 
born. In you, in all men, this sensibility may be 
cultivated and increased, or may be stifled and 
suppressed. 

These sensibilities are suppressed, subdued, and 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 61 

in a measure extinguished, by being resisted ana 
counteracted. No fact in the natural history of 
the human mind is more famiharly known than 
this. Every natural sensibility may be gradually 
extinguished by resistance and by disuse. The 
robber, at first, struggled against his inborn sense 
of justice to bring himself to the crime which he 
meditated ; but, by familiarity with, crime, that 
better sensibihty, which at first revolted at the 
thought of plundering his neighbor, grows faint 
and ineffective. So each of the human sensibili- 
ties related to these secular virtues may be dead- 
ened by habitual suppression, or by the habitual 
indulgence of antagonist passions. You may re- 
sist the impulse which moves you to whatsoever 
things are true ; and, by the resistance, the spring 
from which that impulse comes is weakened. You 
may refuse to act in accordance with the impulse 
which moves you to act in accordance with what- 
soever things are honorable, and at each refusal 
that impulse loses somewhat of its power. You 
may hold back from whatsoever things are de- 
manded by an ingenuous sense of justice, or from 
whatsoever things are pure, or lovely, or of good 



62 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

report ; and all those things will become, gradu- 
ally yet infallibly, more and more alien to your 
nature ; your soul will have less and less affinity 
for such things. Just so, on the other hand, 
these impulses, by yielding to them and bringing 
to their aid the power of habit, may be made 
continually more effectual. Let your thoughts 
be accustomed to observe, and your will to honor 
with its free homage, the beauty of whatsoever 
things are true, or honest, or just, or lovely, 
or of good report; and the sensibiHties which 
recognize these things and move you to pursue 
them will become more vivid, more distinct, more 
prompt and powerful in their impulse on the 
soul. Think on these things. Cultivate the sense 
of their worth and their beauty. Let the habits 
of your mind be formed to obey these sensibili- 
ties ; be careful to allow in yourself nothing that 
is unamiable, ungenerous, or mean, and you will 
find that you are training yourself to do, as if by 
an unconscious instinct, whatsoever things are 
true, or dignified, or just, or pure, or lovely, or 
of good report. 

But I do not forget that I am dealing with you 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 63 

to help you in the beginning and progress of a 
rehgious Hfe. I say then, secondly, that the secu- 
lar and social virtues which I am now commend- 
ing to your attention can not be cultivated in their 
due relation to the Christian life and spirit, unless 
the natural sensibilities which prompt them are 
associated with higher affections. These sensibil- 
ities are a constituent part of that curiously- 
wrought and complicated nature which was cre- 
ated in the image of God. They are a portion 
of that nature which was designed to attain its 
highest dignity and blessedness in the conscious ser- 
vice of God, and in a willing conformity to him. 
These sensibilities, therefore, can have their best 
culture and their fairest and thriftiest growth only 
when they have their life in a natural and healthy 
connection with nobler principles. If you would 
cultivate in your own conduct, amid the tempta- 
tions of this world, whatsoever things are true, you 
must learn to adore, to fear, to love in filial con- 
fidence, the God of truth. If you would exhibit 
in your own character and life whatsoever things 
are worthy of reverent regard, you must learn to 
walk with God by faith, and to live in the habit 



64 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

of a liigli and blessed intercourse with him. If 
you would cultivate in your soul the sense and 
love of justice, you must find your ideal of justice 
in God. If you would wear the image of what- 
soever is pure or lovely or of good report, you 
must sit at the feet of Jesus, and be led by him 
to the knowledge of infinite purity and infinite 
love. 

You see what difference there is in this respect 
between the man who has learned to trust in 
Christ, as a Saviour from sin, and the man, how- 
ever amiable or generous, who is living without 
God in the world. The latter is just what his 
constitutional impulses and his early education 
have made him, and he has no expectation of 
becoming better than he is. The other confesses 
to himself that he is not what he ought to be; 
he asks to understand his errors ; he prays to be 
delivered even from the faults of which he is un- 
conscious ; he is watchful against his own infirmi- 
ties ; and, depending on the offers and promises 
of God in the gospel, he is devoutly aspiring to 
become like Christ, and so to be conformed to the 
will and image of God. In his habitual thought. 



INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS. 65 

all secular and social duties, — all the duties of 
industry and fidelity, of kindness and courtesy, of 
justice and of mercy, — are hallowed and elevated 
by their relation to God, to his own emancipation 
from sin, and to eternity. By all the discipline 
of duty in this Hfe, — by all the affections and re- 
sponsibilities that connect him with human society, 
— the care of a redeeming God is training him, 
and he, entering into God's plan, is training him- 
self for an immortal life of duty and of love. 

Are you thus training your soul for immor- 
tality? 



CHAPTER IV. 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 



"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 
for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do, of 
his good pleasure.''' Phil. iv. 12, 13. 

" Building up yourselves on your most holy Mth." Jude, 
20. 

"According as his divine power hath given unto us all 
things that pertain unto Hfe and godliness, through the 
knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue, 
whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious 
promises, that by these ye might be made partakers of the 
divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the 
world through lust; and, beside this, giving all diUgence, 
add to your faith virtue." 2 Pet. i. 3-5. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 



Why the gospel is given to you. Encouragements to dili- 
gence in self-discipline. Faith without virtue, — not necessa« 
rily licentious, — may be intellectual, — may be sentimental and 
aesthetic. Virtue added to faith. How? 

If you are ready to accept that salvation which 
is offered to you in the name of Christ, — if you 
are ready to ask, not merely, What shall I do to 
be saved from the fearful looking for of judg- 
ment and fiery indignation ? — but also, What 
shall I do to be saved from sin ? — it will be 
easy to lead you, by God's help, in the right 
way. Your desire is to attain a truly and thor- 
oughly Christian character; and you have made 
a covenant with yourself and with God that 
you will use all diligence to that end. What I 
propose, therefore, is not to argue with you, nor 
to expostulate, nor to ply you with exciting ap- 
peals to sensibility, but to help you by showing 



70 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

you what it is which constitutes a truly and 
thoroughly Christian character, and by what 
means and endeavors you may attain to it. 

Sometimes in the Scriptures the entire Chris- 
tian character is summed up in a single word 
or phrase, — such as faiih^ or love^ or the knowl- 
edge of God, or obedience to the truth. In that 
mode of speech, it seems to be assumed that any 
one trait of holiness must of course involve and 
imply every other. In other passages, we have 
a catalogue of Christian graces, "fruits of the 
Spirit," the elements of character, which, in their 
union, are Christian holiness, and which are to 
be severally cultivated by him who would be 
saved through Christ. These two modes of 
speaking are by no means inconsistent with each 
other. All the Christian graces may grow nat- 
urally from one stock, and the existence of any 
one of them, in reality and simplicity, may in- 
volve the existence, in some degree, of all the 
rest; and yet each of these graces may need, 
in order to its growth and its full manifestation 
in the life, a diligent cultivation on the part of 
the renewed and struggling soul. 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 71 

I have already reminded you, more tlian once, 
of the cardinal fact that the gospel is given to 
you for the express purpose of calling you and 
helping you to be saved. That fact is the rea- 
son why your salvation, from first to last, de- 
pends on your believing the gospel. Your be- 
lieving the gospel, in the sense of accepting it 
and trusting in it, implies that you are to avail 
yourself of its offers. No man can really ac- 
cept the gospel and avail himself of it as a way 
of salvation from sin, who does not undertake 
to follow Christ in newness of life. His be- 
lieving the gospel implies, of course, that he is 
to build up himself on his most holy faith ; and 
that he is to add to his faith virtue, or a manly 
well-doing. 

All that God has done to save you, — first by 
providing and proclaiming a free forgiveness 
through Christ, and then by the promise and 
the gift of the Holy Spirit, — encourages you and 
summons you to diligence that you may make 
your calling and election sure. One apostle 
says, " Work out your own salvation with fear 
and trembling, for it is God who worketh in 



72 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

you." Another expands the same thought into 
particulars. First, the divine power has en- 
riched us with all things necessary to spiritual 
life, by giving us the knowledge of a Saviour, 
Secondly, Christ calls us, by bringing life and 
immortality to light, — by setting before us glory 
and virtue as one and inseparable. Thirdly, 
there are given to us exceeding great and pre- 
cious promises, that by them, we, fleeing from 
the corruption that is in the world, may become 
partakers of a divine nature. Look at these 
several considerations, and think how they urge 
you to work out your own salvation in a dili- 
gent self-discipline. 

Whatever pertains to life and godliness, — 
whatever is necessary to your beginning and 
pursuing such a life, — that God has given you, 
by giving you a knowledge of Christ. He who 
knows Christ, knows that there is pardon for 
sinners ; — that a reconciliation and perpetual 
friendship between his own soul and the holy 
God is a practicable thing ; — that his guilt, and 
all the infirmity and perverseness of which he 
is conscious, need not hinder him from coming 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 73 

to God in a penitent submission, nor from be- 
ing owned of God as a forgiven and beloved 
child, 

Christ calls you, by the glory and virtue which 
he sets before you. Think who calls you. He 
who is himself " the brightness of the Father's 
glory." He who, in your nature, compassed 
about with human temptations like as you are, 
has magnified and honored the law of perfect 
holiness, and who thus shows you in his own 
person all true glory and virtue. He calls you, 
not only by his word of invitation, but by his 
example and by his mediation. He calls you to a 
glory like his own, — a glory not factitious nor 
dependent on circumstances, not in any way exter- 
nal to yourself, but the glory of virtue or true 
manliness, — a glory which is simply the realiza- 
tion of the dignity and blessedness for which your 
spirit, with its immortal powers of thought, af- 
fection, and activity, was created, — a glory 
which is in truth the glory of God himself shin- 
ing forth from within you. Under such a call, 
— when Christ the Redeemer calls you, by set- 
ting before you the hope of immortal glory and 



74 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

virtue, - — how urgently does the deep sense of 
what you are and of what you may become 
move you to give yourself at once to the dili- 
gent training of yourself in holiness. 

There are given to you exceeding great and 
precious promises. What are they ? The prom- 
ise of the Holy Spirit, the inward teacher, com- 
forter, and guide of those who trust in Christ. 
The promise from the ascending Saviour, " Lo, I 
am with you always ! " The promise from the 
bosom of Almighty love, " My grace shall be suf- 
ficient for thee ; " "I will never leave thee nor for- 
sake thee." The promise, " No good thing will 
be withheld from them that walk uprightly." 
Such promises are given to you, that by them, 
overcoming the temptations that address them- 
selves to so many inferior sensibilities, you may 
escape the corruption that is in the world through 
lust, and may be transformed into the likeness of 
God's own purity and love. Having, therefore, 
these promises, how cogent is the inference, — 
" Let us cleanse ourselves from all Jilthiness of the 
flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of 
God." 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 75 

You believe, then, the " faithful saying and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
into the world to save sinners." Trusting in that 
testimony and in the exceeding great and precious 
promises which it includes, you desire to build up 
yourself on that most holy faith. The question is, 
how you are to build, — what you are to do in the 
process of working out your salvation. You are 
resolved and ready to use all* diligence that you 
may make your calling and election sure ; and the 
question is, ho"\v you are to do it ? You tell me 
that you believe the gospel — that you are not 
hindered by doubts on the question whether God 
is in Christ reconciling the world to himself; but 
you ask, " What am I to do ? " Just here I meet 
you, in Christ's name, with an answer which can 
not be disputed : — 

"ADD TO YOUR FAITH VIRTUE." 

Such a precept implies that, in some sense, there 
may be faith without virtue ; or, at least, that faith 
may be contemplated as disjoined from virtue, even 
when it is in some sense Christian faith. What is 
that faith to which virtue is not supplied ? 



76 CHRISTIAN" SELF-CULTURE. 

It is not, necessarily, a licentious religion like 
that antinomianism, theoretical and practical, 
which sometimes appears in the garb of zeal for 
the gospel of salvation by grace alone. It may 
be something more than that gross caricature of 
religion which satisfies itself with its own dogmas, 
and despises the restraints of morality. Virtue, 
as the word is now currently used, is often regarded 
as a merely negative quality, — an exemption from 
certain outward vices, particularly fraud and im- 
purity. The word, however, in its ancient and 
proper meaning, implies much more than this ; it 
means something positive ; it means strength, 
manliness, worth. In its primitive sense, the word 
virtue (and also the Greek word thus translated) 
includes the idea of valor, or courage and strength 
for war, — the quality most appreciated and hon- 
ored in that state of society in which war is the 
chief test of manhood. Faith, then, though it hap- 
pens to coexist with outward decency and negative 
morality, may yet be faith without virtue. Faith 
without virtue, in the true sense of words, is faith 
without real manliness, — faith which imparts no 
positive strength or worth to the soul. 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 77 

Christian faith, in its largest sense, and indeed 
in every sense, is the opposite of infidelity, or of 
the unbelief which rejects Christ and the Word of 
God. Faith, in whatever sense, is the belief of 
Christian truth. Bearing this in mind, you may 
^ee more distinctly what faith is when disjoined 
from its proper relation to virtue. 

There may be a merely intellectual state of 
mind, which, under the force of tradition or author- 
ity, or in view of historical or other arguments, 
recognizes the gospel of Christ as from God, and 
recognizes the Scriptures as a true record of God's 
revelations to men, and recognizes certain propo- 
sitions as revealed and recorded in the Scriptures. 
Undoubtedly, this is faith or belief, so far as it goes. 
So far, it is the same thing with the faith of the 
humblest, most penitent, and most devoted be- 
liever. But if it goes no farther, it is faith with- 
out virtue, — it is dead ; it is not faith in that higher 
and more complex sense in which the gospel tells 
us, " He that believeth shall be saved ; " it is not 
faith in that less analytic and more Christian use 
of the word in which " faith is the substance of 
things hoped for, and the evidence of things not 



78 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

seen." The faith which is only orthodox, however 
logical, however intelligent and exact, is faith with- 
out virtue. 

But faith without virtue maybe something more 
than this. There may be a habit of mind, not 
simply intellectual but sentimental, which is only 
another style of the faith to which virtue has not 
been added. In the intellectual apprehension of 
God, — the eternal source of being, the wise and 
beneficent Creator, — the ever-present, sustaining, 
and guiding energy of the universe, — the ruler 
and judge of his responsible creatures in all the 
worlds of his infinite empire, — in the mere idea 
of God as the Bible reveals him to our faculty of 
knowledge, — there is something which kindles the 
natural sensibilities of wonder and awe, and 
wakens even a sluggish soul to emotion. In the 
idea of eternity, and especially in the thought of 
a personal immortality, there is something which 
dilates the mind with the sense of grandeur, and 
thrills it with the feeling of an infinite need. In 
the thought of responsibility and of eternal retri- 
butions, there is something which compels the soul 
to tremble. So in the history and character of 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 79 

Jesus Christ, there is something which speaks to 
the tenderest and the subhmest sensibilities of 
every human being. No man can intelhgently 
trace the story of redemption, — from the manger- 
cradle at Bethlehem to the cross and the tomb, 
and thence to the ascension from the Mount of 
Olives, — and not feel, to some extent, the power of 
it on his human sensibihties. All this awakened 
sensibility may be added to the intellectual recog- 
nition of Christianity as historically and doctrin- 
ally true, while yet the virtue of which we are 
speaking is absent. This, so far as it goes, is faith. 
So far as it goes, it is identical with the faith of 
the humblest and hohest mind. But all this, if it 
stops here, exhausting itself in mere feeling, how- 
ever intense or however refined, is not faith, in 
that more complex sense in which faith accom- 
panies salvation. Even 'at this point, though the 
feeling be ever so deep and strong, and ever so 
delightful, the mind's reception of the truth is faith 
only in that analytic sense in which faith is dead. 
The faith of mere sentiment and emotion, as really 
as the faith of mere logic and doctrine, is faith 
without virtue, belief without true manliness. 



80 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

You are to remember, then, that faith is com- 
plete, and is really itself, only when it stands in 
its proper relation to virtue ; that is, when it lives 
in a vital connection with true worth, with active 
strength, with manliness of soul. In other words, 
faith is an unfinished and fragmentary, and there- 
fore an unnatural thing, unless to faith is added 
virtue. But how is it that, when virtue is added 
to faith, the faith is completed and becomes itself? 
How is it that faith is developed into virtue? 
What is the vital relation of the one to the other ? 

I answer, faith begins to be unfolded into virtue, 
when the intellectual reception of the gospel as 
true, with the naturally attendant feeling, is ac- 
companied by the appropriate action of the moral 
powers. There may be, in some sense, just con- 
ceptions or intellectual views of things not seen ; 
and there may be emotions of wonder and awe, of 
fear, of desire, of hope, and even of delight, while 
yet there is no sovereignty of right principle and 
purpose within the soul, no force of restraining and 
controlling conscience, no action of the moral 
powers in conformity with truth and obligation. 
But when these sensibilities, fed by the contempla- 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 81 

tion of the truth, serve to quicken and invigorate 
the conscience, and when, instead of terminating 
in mere emotion, they terminate in right action, 
swaying the will and all the moral and responsible 
nature to those inclinations and affections, and to 
those aims and efforts in life, which constitute true 
manhood, — when thus all that the gospel reveals 
of majesty and glory, of terror and mercy, of pity 
and of love, begins to be the spring of action 
in the soul, — then to faith is added something 
of virtue, and faith begins to show itself in its 
completeness, — not dead but living, — a vital force. 
Then it is, and not till then, that faith begins to 
" work by love," and to take hold upon eternal 
life. 

The progress of faith, as it is unfolded into 
virtue, may be delineated by tracing the progressive 
subjugation of the soul in all its habits to the power 
of conscience and to the will of God. When the 
soul is not only impelled to'individual acts of man- 
liness by overmastering appeals, but is formed to 
habits of manliness by the steady influence of eter- 
nal things upon the thoughts and the unexcited 
feelings, — when, through the long-accustomed 



82 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

regard of things not seen, temptation gradually 
loses its power, and duty is performed, — not reluc- 
tantly, nor as the result of a struggle against old 
propensities, but promptly, gladly, with undivided 
energy, — then virtue is added to faith. Then it 
is that faith is complete, by being the source from 
which the soul is supplied, unfailingly, with manly 
strength for all responsibility, and with a spontane- 
ous earnestness in duty. 

We are now prepared for the more immediately 
practical question : How, by what diligence, is 
this result to be realized ? I will suppose that this 
question is your question. I will suppose that you, 
to whom I am speaking from this page, are asking 
how you may thus build up yourself on your most 
holy faith, — by what endeavors of self-discipline 
your belief of the gospel may be unfolded into 
virtue. Assuming that you are in earnest, I will 
answer your question, not by propounding particu- 
lar rules of self-discipliile, but rather by suggesting 
to you some general views, which, if you receive 
them and act upon them, may be better to you 
than much minute instruction. 

1. Remember, then, that to perform all the 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 83 

duties of your allotted place and relations in this 
life is the service to which God is calling you. 
This is the way in which you are to serve the will 
of God in your generation. God has made you, 
not for mere contemplation, not for the acquisition 
and enjoyment of knowledge alone, not merely to 
see and to know even the highest and most glori- 
ous of all themes of thought ; but for something 
better and nobler. God has made you, not for 
mere feeling, and that kind of enjoyment which 
consists in feeling only ; but for something higher 
and better. God has made you for work, and he 
has given you work to do. The end for which all 
your powers are given is not thought, nor emotion, 
but duty, — work to be done for God, the infinite and 
universal worker. Remember God has placed you 
here not merely to know and to feel, not merely 
to worship in prayer and praise, not merely to be 
enraptured with the sublime and the beautiful in 
God, and in his works and ways, but to work. 
And what is the work which God has given you 
to do ? What is the work which he puts to your 
hand, day by day ? That work you are to do for 
him. That work is duty; and duty, however 



84 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

humble may be the sphere in which it is to be per- 
formed, is something higher than all the activity 
of mere thought or all the rapture of emotion. 
The duties of your allotted place and relations in 
this world, — the work which he gives you the oppor- 
tunity of doing, — the honest and useful work (honest 
because useful) which belongs to your position as 
a member of the great human family, — the whole 
of it, including all that you can do to make any 
human being better or happier, — is the service to 
which God is now calling you. Remember this, 
and you will never fail to realize that the religion 
of mere knowledge and intellectual belief is worth- 
less, and that the religion of mere sentimentalism 
is no better. Remember this ; remember that the 
service to which God calls you is not mere medi- 
tation or emotion, but duty, — duty in every rela- 
tion of man to man or of man to God ; and all the 
grandeur and impressiveness that there is in the 
objects of faith becomes a- living power to waken 
and impel the conscience. 

2. Remember that unless religion has this effi- 
cacy upon your conscience, and through your 
conscience upon your entire character, the whole 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 85 

apparatus and discipline of religion is in your case 
a failure. The Bible, prayer, the Sabbath, the 
house of God, the preaching of the Word, and 
the formal communion of God's people with each 
other and with Christ, are what I mean by the 
apparatus and discipline of religion. The end at 
which all these things aim is that the soul may 
be brought under the dominion of the high and 
holy will of God. Subjection to God — or, what 
is the same thing, subjection to duty — is the only 
true manliness, for it is the chief end of man. 
Conscience, echoing the voice of God, and sway- 
ing the soul to a willing obedience, — conscience, 
communing with God, and drinking in light and 
life from the glory of his countenance, — con- 
science, acting not as an accuser only, to terrify 
the soul with a certain fearful looking for of 
judgment, but as a guide to lead the soul in paths 
of wisdom and of peace, — is the highest noble- 
ness of man. And all religion, or rather all re- 
ligiousness, — whether it be the religiousness of 
formalism, or the religiousness of dogmatism, or 
the religiousness of sentimentalism, — all religious 
service and ceremony, — all religious knowledge, 



86 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

— all religious feeling, — which does not quicken 
the conscience into activity and dominion in the 
soul, is a failure. 

3. I may answer your question, then, in this 
one comprehensive precept : If you would build 
up yourself on your most holy faith, adding to 
your faith virtue, walk hy faith. You say that 
you believe the gospel ; then let that which you 
believe inspire and control your daily activity. 
Faith, in the most analytic sense, is the knowledge 
and belief of things not seen. He who walks by 
sight, — no matter how much he knows nor how 
much he feels of things beyond the vail, — he who 
in the daily work of life, in the toils and struggles 
through which the providence of God is leading 
him, governs himself only by considerations from 
the sphere of the things which are transient and 
visible, — will never add to his faith virtue. But 
if you will, from this time forward, walk by faith, 

— if you will henceforth bring your employments, 
your plans and undertakings, your hopes and 
aims, your pleasures and amusements, into the 
light of those invisible and eternal things which 
your belief recognizes, and will govern yourself 



FAITH AND MANLINESS. 87 

accordingly, — your faith, instead of lying fruitless 
and dead in the mind, a matter of mere intelli- 
gence or mere sentiment, will henceforth be a 
practical thing, translating thought and emotion 
into manly action, and finding itself completed in 
virtue. 



CHAPTER Y. 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 



" As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that 
are offered in sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is noth- 
ing in the world, and that there is none other God but one : 
for though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or 
in earth (as there be gods many and lords many) ; yet to us 
there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and 
we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all 
things, and we by him. Howbeit there is not in every man 
that KNOWLEDGE : for some with conscience of the idol unto 
this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol ; and their con- 
science, being weak, is defiled." 1 Cor. viii. 4-7. 

" Brethren, be not children in understanding : howbeit in 
malice be ye children, but in undeestanding be te men.'* 
1 Cor. xiv. 20. 

" Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the 
Lord is." Eph. v. 17. 

" And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and 
more in knowledge and in all judgment." Phil. i. 9. 

" Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ; and to 
virtue, knowledge." 2 Pet. i. 5. 



CHAPTER V. 

ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 

Add to virtue knowledge. Eelation of religious knowledge 
to Christian character. Necessity of knowing what is right, 
in order to do what is right. An illustration from the New 
Testament. Defects of virtue without knowledge. Morbid 
scrupulousness, — a servile spirit, — bigotry. When virtue is 
completed in knowledge, the purpose of well-doing is enlivened 
and invigorated, and becomes an enhghtened conscientious- 
ness. 

Assuming, now, that you humbly trust in the 
grace of God, and that, depending on Christ for 
reconciliation to God and for strength and victory 
in the conflict with evil, you have heartily under- 
taken to follow Christ in all well-doing, I ask for 
your serious attention while I attempt to show 
you another aspect of progress in the Christian 
life. You have undertaken a life -long work of 
self-discipline. You are resolved that henceforth 
the great business of your life shall be to do God's 
will, trusting in his mercy and his promised help, 



92 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUEE. 

and so training yourself for your immortality. 
Thus you hope to be progressively emancipated 
from the power of sin, and transformed by the 
renewing of your mind. 

Such progress can not be achieved by mere 
strength of will. The purpose to do right, always 
and in all things, is not all that is necessary to a 
perfect well-doing. In order to do right, you 
must know what is right. The manliest, most 
strenuous, and most conscientious purpose will 
often err, unless it be guided by intelligence. It 
is not enough that you add to your faith virtue ; 
your manly purpose of well-doing must be divinely 
enlightened. You must add 

" TO VIRTUE KNOWLEDGE." 

If we take the word knowledge in its widest 
sense, there is a beautiful fitness in the conjunction 
of knowledge with that manly conscientiousness 
which is the legitimate consequence of faith in 
the word of God. The man who receives the 
gospel as his hope, and who, with a quickened 
conscience and a resolute determination, under- 
takes to obey and follow Christ, must be, in pro- 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 93 

portion to his faculties, his opportunities, and his 
means of acquiring knowledge, an intelligent man. 
Especially is he bound to be intelligent in the 
things which immediately concern his faith and 
duty as a follower of Christ. From the beginning 
of his confidence and hope, from his first experi- 
ence of the work of the Holy Spirit, onward 
through all his progress as a believer, he is to 
grow in grace and in the knowledge of his Lord 
and Saviour. It is true that no eminent intelli- 
gence is necessary to the beginning of discipleship 
in the school of Christ, — nothing more than the 
childlike belief that Christ is able to teach and to 
save, and the humble purpose to learn of him and 
to obey him ; but from that beginning the disciple 
follows on to know the Lord, and to know all 
that God has revealed to men. True religion 
distinguishes itself from superstition by its alliance 
with light, and by its genial influence on all the 
powers of thought. It says to all who receive its 
lessons, " Be not children in understanding ; in 
malice be ye children, but in understanding be 
ye men." 

At present, however, let us take this word 



94 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

" knowledge " in a more limited meaning. The 
spontaneous utterance of faith unfolding itself into 
virtue is in the question which came from the 
heart of Saul in the hour of his conversion, — 
''^ Jjord, what wilt thou have me* to do?" That 
question was a cry for knowledge, — " How can 
I rightly serve thee whom I have persecuted ? " 
The converted mind, turning to follow Christ in 
newness of life, longs for the knowledge of all 
duty. Such is the knowledge which must be 
added to virtue, as virtue is added to faith. 

For the sake of giving you a more definite idea 
of what the knowledge is without which con- 
scientiousness is incomplete and unbalanced, let 
me illustrate my meaning by a historic instance 
from the New Testament. 

One great error of Judaism, in the time of 
Christ and the apostles, was that, in its attention 
to external and ceremonial institutions, it had lost 
sight of higher principles, and had ceased to honor 
with due regard the eternal distinctions between 
right and wrong. Those among them who aspired 
to eminent sanctity were extremely scrupulous 
about the payment of tithes and the practice of 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 95 

ceremonial washings, and extremely sensitive to the 
forms of sanctity as they understood it ; but withal 
they were prone to neglect the weightier matters 
of inward purity and faithfulness, and of spiritual 
religion. On the other hand, one grand charac- 
teristic of the religion tauglit by Christ and his 
apostles was, that it insisted on the universal and 
eternal first principle of holiness, — love to God 
and love to man, — love in the heart, flowing out 
spontaneously into all outward duties of morality 
and of piety. All outward performances, not 
springing from the perception and recognition of 
the great objects of faith, were worthless in the 
view of Christ, and of the apostles who spoke In 
his name and by his Spirit. Yet those who ac- 
cepted the gospel, and trusted in Christ as the 
one Mediator between God and men, did not all 
throw off at once and equally their former habits 
of thinking. The converted Jew was often prone 
to think that ceremonial observances were of much 
Importance, and to cramp the freedom of the gos- 
pel with the fetters of Jewish scrupulousness. 

Thus it came to pass, that wherever there were 
churches consisting partly of Jews and partly of 



96 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

Gentiles, the relations of Christians to the super- 
stitions of the heathen around them were compli- 
cated and often perplexing. The abhorred idola- 
try of the heathen was not confined to their tem- 
ples, nor to acts of public and formal worship, but 
was mingled with all the concerns of life. When 
victims were slain in sacrifice at the temples, only 
a part of the flesh was ordinarily consumed on the 
altar ; another portion was reserved by the offerer 
to be a feast for his family and friends, either in 
the temple or in his own dwelling ; and another 
portion became the perquisite of the priests, and 
was often sent to be sold in the pubhc market. 
Thus, and in many other ways, the Christian, and 
especially the converted Gentile, was surrounded 
by temptations to some sort of communion with 
idolatry ; and what he might do, and what he 
might not do, without contracting the guilt of 
idol-worship, was sometimes a perplexing question. 
Some, especially those of Jewish birth and educa- 
tion, had a strong feeling, as if some moral pollu- 
tion was attached to the very flesh of an idol 
sacrifice, and would purchase nothing in the mar- 
ket, would eat nothing anywhere, without being 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 97 

first certified that it had no taint of idolatry about 
it. In this way, they brought themselves under a 
yoke of bondage. Forgetting that the earth is the 
Lord's and the fullness thereof, — forgetting that 
it is not that which entereth into a man that de- 
fileth him, — their virtue, or strength of charac- 
ter and strenuous purpose to do right, though 
prompted and sustained by faith, was misdirected. 
Others there were who looked on the whole mat- 
ter in a different view. " The idol," they said, 
" is notliing, and to me, therefore, the circum- 
stance that this food which I find in the market- 
place, or which is set before me at the table of a 
friend, has been offered to an idol, is of no conse- 
quence. I do not offer it to the idol ; and in eat- 
ing it, I give God thanks and commit no idolatry." 
This difference of views among imperfectly in- 
structed disciples was one of the many sources of 
difficulty in the church at Corinth ; and the ques- 
tion was referred to the Apostle Paul for his 
advice. The apostle in his answer [1 Cor. viii.], 
speaks of " knowledge " and the want of " knowl- 
edge " as having caused the difference. " We 
hnow^^ he says, " that an idol is nothing in the 



98 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

world, and that tliere is none other God but one," 
" of whom are all things, and we in him ; " and, 
therefore, he whose mind is completely emanci- 
pated from all reverence for idols, and who eats 
this food merely as food, not asking any questions 
as to whence it came, and giving thanks through 
Jesus Christ to God the author of all good, is 
free from the guilt df idolatry. " Howbeit," adds 
the apostle, " there is not in every man that 
hnowledge ; for some, with conscience of the idol 
to this hour, eat it as a thing offered to an idol, 
and their conscience, being weak, is defiled ; " 
and, from that point, he proceeds to show that a 
good man's conduct, in such cases, should be regu- 
lated by a benevolent regard for the welfare of 
others. 

You see, then, what I mean when I say that 
if you are to advance in the moral and spiritual 
self-discipline to which the gospel calls you, your 
believing manliness in duty must be enlightened 
by knowledge. Those who were most scrupu- 
lous, most superstitious, most censorious, in regard 
to the indiscriminate use of meats sold in the 
markets at Corinth, had faith ; they believed in 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 99 

Christ ; they trusted in him for acceptance with 
God ; they received with full confidence the truth 
that God hath appointed a day in which he will 
judge the world in righteousness. Nor was their 
belief inoperative, for to faith they added virtue. 
Their faith was not mere theory or imagination, 
nor mere feeling ; it was to them the main spring 
of action. They combined with it an active con- 
scientiousness. They intended to do right, what- 
ever it might cost them. But their Christian 
manliness, not being conjoined with knowledge, 
was incomplete ; it was virtue without guidance ; 
and, therefore, with all their conscientiousness 
and their determination to do right at all haz- 
ards, they erred, and so erred as to be deserv- 
ing of censure for the dishonor which they 
brought on the name of Christ. 

No wonder, then, that knowledge is so often 
insisted on in the Scriptures as an element of 
Christian character. Knowledge, wherever it is 
spoken of in a catalogue of spiritual graces or of 
spiritual gifts, means just what it means in the 
instance to which I have referred you for an 
illustration ; it means not speculative science. 



100 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

natural or even theological, but moral discrim* 
ination. Thus when the apostle Paul prays for 
the Philipplans that their love " may abound yet 
more and more in knowledge and in all judg- 
ment," it is that they " may approve things that 
are excellent," that they " may be sincere," (that 
is, reproachless, such that the sun may shine upon 
without discovering any flaw or fault,) " and with- 
out offense till the day of Christ." 

You see, then, already, that as virtue is neces- 
sary to the completeness of faith, so knowledge, 
in this New Testament meaning of the word, is 
necessary to the completeness of virtue. As faith 
is the first element, and practical conscientious- 
ness the second, so this knowledge is the third 
element in a well-proportioned Christian char- 
acter. It is distinct from faith and virtue, inas- 
much as in the analysis of character it may be 
distinctly contemplated, and a lack of it is some- 
times manifest where faith and virtue are con- 
spicuous. Yet, if we take another view, it is in 
fact inseparable from faith and virtue, and some- 
thing of it must be implied in the very existence 
of true virtue sustained by Christian faith. Vir- 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 101 

tue, in the New Testament meaning of the word, 
is the manliness of faith, the soul's activity under 
the dictates and the impulse of those moral sen- 
sibilities which faith has quickened. Knowledge 
is that illumination and enlargement of mind, that 
habit and disciplined faculty of moral discrimina- 
tion, which gives force and direction to virtue. 
Virtue without knowledge is fragmentary ; vir- 
tue in its just combination with knowledge is a 
whole, rounded and complete. 

You understand, then, what that knowledge is 
without which virtue, or religious conscientious- 
ness, however strenuous, is imperfect. But I 
would have you understand more distinctly what 
are the defects of that imperfect virtue. I 
do not imply that such virtue is only a formal 
morality, for it is a virtue in which faith is pre- 
supposed. It is a living conscientiousness, in- 
spired and sustained by the habitual contempla- 
tion of things not seen. It is an earnest purpose, 
inspired and sustained by the habitual contem- 
plation of God and eternity, of the soul's infinite 
need and infinite ruin, and of redemption by the 
power and the sacrifice of Christ. Such virtue, 



102 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

however feeble, and however erring, implies some- 
thing of the faculty and of the habit of moral 
discrimination, some discerning of things that are 
excellent, some perception of the moral relations 
and tendencies af actions, and some sense of the 
grand principles of Christian duty. But how 
often do we actually find such virtue erring, and 
missing its mark, and starving itself, and dishon- 
oring its own name, for the lack of knowledge ? 
Conscientiousness without knowledge may be ear- 
nest and devout, but it betrays its weakness ; it 
is, at the best, a lame and unfinished virtue. 

1. It is often characterized by a morbid scru- 
pulousness. " Tenderness of conscience," says a 
most acute observer, " is always to be distin- 
guished from scrupulousness. The conscience 
can not be kept too sensible and tender ; but 
scrupulousness arises from bodily or mental in- 
finnity, and discovers itself in a multitude of 
ridiculous and superstitious and painful feelings." 
Whenever that moral discernment, wdiich the 
New Testament calls knowledge, is wanting, 
there virtue, however conscientious and religious, 
is prone to exhaust itself on little things. So 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 103 

much of its time and thought and zeal is occu- 
pied with tithing mint, anise, and cummin, — 
so much of its force is directed to the circum- 
stances of duty, — that it can not expand into the 
graceful and commanding proportions of the per- 
fect man in Christ Jesus. 

2. Virtue without knowledge is naturally servile 
in its spirit. It walks in the oldness of the letter, 
and not in the newness of emancipated life. It 
brincrs itself under bondao;e to forms, and acts more 
from the fear of doing wrong than from the fear- 
less and joyous consciousness of right. It lacks 
the inspiring sense of freedom. Confounding 
duty itself with the form or circumstances of 
duty, it moves under constraint, and can not 
mount up as with w^ngs. As it can not see the 
rigiht and the wrong in the lio-ht of the hio^hest 
and most comprehensive principles, it naturally 
falls back upon some narrow formula, and guides 
itself by specific rules blindly applied. It de- 
pends upon some authority which is not tlie au- 
thority of God himself speaking to the soul which 
he has made. It asks not, simply and directly, 
What is right? — what is the application of the 



104 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUKK 

law of love ? — what the spontaneous impulse of 
a soul moving in free and blessed accordance with 
the mind of God? — but what is it which the 
Church, as taught by the fathers or by councils, 
pronounces wrong? — or, what is it which this 
or that dictator to conscience prohibits? — or, 
what is it which has been voted into the cata- 
logue of immoralities by this or that reforming 
society ? — or, what is it which in some particu- 
lar clique or circle is considered to be inconsist- 
ent with relio;ion ? Virtue without knowleds!:© 
may be earnest and true, sustained by an inspir- 
ing conviction of the reality of things not seen ; 
it may thus have a zeal which will compass sea 
and land with its heroic enterprises ; it may have 
the sturdy inflexibility that will stand up against 
a world of opposition, — that will not be daunted 
by the gloom of the prison, — that will raise the 
hymn of victory at the stake amid the crackling 
fagots ; but after all it is prone to be servile. 

3. It follows that the virtue which has this 
defect is often, not to say always, bigoted. The 
man who, while to faith he adds virtue, does 
not add to virtue knowledge, is not only natu- 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 105 

rally scrupulous in respect to his own actions, 
and servile in the subjection of his conscience 
to his leader or his party or to his narrow rule, 
but he can hardly avoid some taint of bigotry 
in his judgment of those whose consciences differ 
in any thing from his. That particular form 
of doing a thing, those particular circumstances, 
just that drapery, may be, to such a man, in all 
his conscientiousness, the very essence of the duty, 
and the test by which he judges all men. If he 
were to neglect that form or those circumstances, 
he would condemn himself severely ; and when 
he sees such neglect in others, he judges them 
with the same severity. As he guides his own 
conduct, so he judges the conduct of others, by 
forms, by traditions perhaps which he has received 
from those around him, and not by principles 
clearly discerned and freely applied. 

Understanding thus the defects of virtue with- 
out knowledge, you are prepared to understand 
how it is that knowledge is the complement or 
completeness of virtue. Think what that virtue 
is which is combined with the faculty and habit 
of moral discrimination. 



106 CHRISTIAN" SELF-CULTURE. 

1. It is virtue enlivened and invigorated bj an 
enlarged acquaintance with the objects of faith. 
There is a difference between that simple con- 
viction of the reality of things not seeuj. -which lies 
at the foundation of all Christian character, and 
that clear, discriminating, expanded acquaintance 
with things pertaining to God and salvation, 
, which is acquired in the progress of religious 
experience. The one is faith ; the other is knowl- 
edge. Some knowledge, — some idea or concep- 
tion of eternal things as real, — is indispensable 
to faith ; but as the believing soul carries out 
its convictions, and translates them into action, 
and thus follows on to know the Lord, — as, in 
a devout and obedient attention to God's word, 
it walks with God, and holds communion with 
infinite purity, — that soul grows not only in 
gracious affection but in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and of course 
in the knowledge of all that concerns his dignity, 
his office, and the salvation he accomplishes. 
Thus as virtue springs from faith, and is nour- 
ished by it, so faith and virtue furnish the soul 
witli knowledge ; and the more familiarly a truly 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 107 

Christian man is acquainted with Christianity 
as a whole, and in all its parts, — with God in 
his revealed majesty and holiness, — with Christ 
in the glory which he had with the Father be- 
fore the world was, and in the glory of his hu- 
miliation and death as a partaker of our nature, 
— the more will his resolute purpose to do right 
be instructed and strengthened. The virtue 
which has ripened into knowledge is an earnest 
conscientiousness, strengthened and cheered by 
familiar acquaintance with things not seen. 

2. It is more than this. It is virtue enlight- 
ened and free. It is the virtue or manliness 
of a mind accustomed to regard the principles 
of duty and the relations and tendencies of ac- 
tions. There may be a true conscientiousness, 
resolute and strenuous, that moves in bondage 
to rules inadequately comprehended by the mind, 
and applied without just discrimination. But as 
the disciple whose faith inspires and sustains his 
manly purpose of well-doing advances in Chris- 
tian knowledge, he becomes familiar, not with 
rules alone, but with grand principles of duty. 
He sees everywhere, in whatever work or duty, 



108 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

the application of that paramount law, — the law 
of love to God and to man, — the law of doing 
good, always and everywhere, for time and for 
eternity, in communion with the God of love. 
The more familiar he becomes with this first 
principle of all duty, and with its leading appli- 
cations, the more accustomed he is to see, in 
every particular rule of right, the sanctity and 
beauty of this universal law ; the more sponta- 
neously will his sense of right distinguish the 
things that are excellent ; and the more effec- 
tually will he be brought into the illuminated 
freedom of those whose inmost life is holiness 
and love. 

" Giving all diligence, add to your faith vir- 
tue, and to virtue knowledge." Remember this. 
Knowledge, the completeness of virtue, is to be 
attained bv diligence. Remember that the dis- 
ciple must give all diligence if he would build 
up, on the basis of his faith, a true and manly 
character. Remember that, in order to the com- 
pleteness of virtue and of the soul's conformity 
to Christ, there must be a steady, earnest, per- 
severing self-discipline. And is not the attain- 



ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 109 

ment worth the effort ? Think not that the at- 
tainment is too high for you. Remember those 
exceeding great and precious promises whereby 
you may escape the corruption that is in the 
world, and become partaker of a divine nature. 
Remember that those promises avail not for the 
indifferent and the slothful, but for those who 
give all diligence that they may add to their 
faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge. 



CHAPTER YI. 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 



" But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours be- 
come a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any 
man see thee, who hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's 
temple, shall not the conscience of him who is weak be em- 
boldened to eat those things which are offered to idols ; and 
through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom 
Christ died 'i " 1 Cor. viii. 9-11. 

" You know that in the races of the stadium, though all may 
run, yet but one can gain the prize ; — (so run that you may win.) 
And every man who strives in the matches, trains himself by 
all manner of self-restraint ; yet they do it to win a crown of 
fading leaves, — we a crown that can not fade. I, therefore, 
run not like the racer who is uncertain of his goal ; I fight, not 
as the pugilist who strikes out into the air ; but I bring my 
body into bondage, crushing it with heavy blows, lest, per- 
chance, having called others to the contest, I should myself 
fail shamefully of the prize." 1 Cor. ix. 24-27. Conybeare's 
version. 

" Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant 
how that aU our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed 
through the sea. . . . But with many of them God was 
not well pleased ; for they were overthrown in the wilder- 
ness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we 
should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. . . . 
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall. . . . All things are lawful for me, but all things are 
not expedient : all things are lawful for me, but all things edify 
not." 1 Cor. X. 1, 5, 6, 12, 23. 

" Giving all diligence add ... to knowledge temperance.'"' 
2 Pet. i. 5, 6. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 

One-sidedness. Two sorts of one-sided men at Corinth. 
Knowledge without temperance tends to sensual indulgence, — 
to contempt of the weak, — to lax opinions terminating in 
apostasy. Knowledge developed into temperance — puts the 
disciple on his guard against all self-indulgence, — makes him 
humble and gentle, — trains his inclinations and emotions into 
harmony with duty. How to acquire a Christian self-control. 

There is great need of watching against one- 
sidedness in the formation and growth of rehgious 
character. Faith is the basis of all religion ; and 
faith in Christ, or a simple reliance on hnn as the 
only sacrifice for sin, and a simple confidence in 
his promises of free and full salvation, is what 
makes a Christian. It is here that you are to 
begin. You are to receive Christ and justification 
before God by faith ; you are to live by faith ; you 
are to walk by faith ; and your faith is to save 
you. But, as " James, the servant of God," 



114 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

assures you, " faith without works is dead." The 
faith which does not quicken the conscience, and 
strengthen the soul in all well-doing, is worthless. 
Faith, then, or confidence in the gospel, must be 
completed and balanced by what the Apostle Peter 
calls " virtue," or the strenuous purpose to perform 
all duty ; for otherwise it is one-sided and mon- 
strous, — a mere perversion of faith rather than faith 
itself. In like manner that resolute conscientious- 
ness — as I have already shown you — needs the 
guidance and strength, and the enlargement and 
freedom, which come from knowledge ; or it is in 
danger of becoming a servile and timid scrupu- 
lousness or a narrow and contentious bigotry. 

I am now to warn you against one-sidedness in 
another direction. Even when we add to faith 
virtue, and to virtue knowledge, we have not yet 
formed the perfect man in Jesus Christ. We have, 
indeed, guarded the conscientious purpose to do 
right against the danger of becoming bigoted and 
timorous. We have released it from the bondage 
of mere forms and mechanical rules, and have 
brought it forth to breathe the invigorating air and 
move in the cheering light of Christian freedom. 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 115 

But just at this point the beHever seeking to form 
his soul by grace into the image of Christ needs 
another caution. He must add 

" TO KNOWLEDGE TEMPERANCE.'* 

Let your mind again revert to those circum- 
stances in the early history of the gospel, and 
especially of the Corinthian church, from which 
we have already derived an illustration of the 
necessity of knowledge to guide and strengthen 
virtue. Those believers at Corinth whose zeal 
against idolatry, and whose dread of the moral pol- 
lution inseparable from it, would not let them pur- 
chase what was offered in the market, or eat what 
was set before them at the table of a friend, unless 
they could first obtain positive evidence that it 
had no taint of idolatry about it, had added virtue 
to their faith. They had conjoined with their 
confidence in Christ an earnest purpose to do 
right. The practical error into which they fell 
was the error of strenuous virtue not rightly di- 
rected. It was the error of that conscientiousness 
which lacks the guidance of knowledge. Others 
there were in Corinth who had the knowledge in 



116 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

which those over-scrupulous brethren were de- 
ficient; but for that very reason, they, on their 
part, needed to be put upon their guard against an 
opposite danger. They saw and understood that 
an idol is nothing in the world. They knew that 
it was only by the consent and act of the mind 
that the guilt of idol-worship could be contracted. 
Thus they were free from the bondage of a morbid 
scrupulousness. Whatever was set before them 
— whatever was sold in the market — they could 
freely eat, asking no questions for conscience' sake, 
and offering thanks to God the giver. They added 
to their virtue knowledge. But they were not, 
therefore, free from danger even in that matter of 
things offered to idols. On the contrary, their 
strong sense of the freedom of the gospel — that 
very elevation of their minds above mere forms 
and outward rules — involved some special perils. 
Let us see what those perils were, and what they 
must be in all similar cases. 

1. The man of knowledge, in the sense in which 
knowledge is now spoken of, is in danger from 
temptations to sensual indulgence. He knows that 
*' it is not that which goeth into the mouth that 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 117 

defileth a man." He knows that in mere ab- 
stinence from this or that particular kind of food, 
in merely denying a natural and healthy appetite 
or taste, in mere fastings and vigils, or in any other 
self-imposed privation or infliction, there is no 
righteousness nor any thing that can commend the 
ascetic to God. He knows that " every creature of 
God is good, and to be received with thankfulness." 
He is emancipated from the narrow scruples by 
which some men are fettered. He has overcome 
the slavish spirit of subjection to dead forms. The 
gospel is to him a law of liberty. On this side, 
then, — even in the direction of that knowledge 
which emancipates him, and of that enlargement 
and elevation of mind which rises above little 
scruples and looks exclusively to great principles, 
— in just this quarter, he is exposed to danger 
from the temptations which address themselves to 
his inferior nature. He is in danger of falling 
into practices and habits, which will be more per- 
nicious to his soul than all the over-scrupulousness 
of an unenlio-htened conscience. 

It seems to have been so with some at Corinth. 
The apostle Paul, in his first epistle to that 



118 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

cliurcli, found it necessary to caution them in this 
particular. He warned them against " lusting 
after evil things," (x. 6,) and most earnestly put 
them on their P-uard against drunkenness and other 
gross sensualities, (vi. 9-20,) in comparison with 
which the most timid and bigoted scrupulousness 
would be only a trifling error. You may pity the 
man who is afraid to taste even of the sacramental 
cup lest it should happen to contain something fer- 
mented. No doubt the addition of more knowl- 
edge to his virtue w^ould be a great improvement 
in his religious character. But, on the other 
hand, that man who, having added to his virtue 
knowledge, rises far above all scruples about self- 
indulgence, — that man who, having learned that 
" Christianity is neither ascetic nor fanatic," puts 
the sparkling wine freely and daily to his lips, and 
becomes discriminating and learned in the science 
of good eating and good drinking, and feels that to 
lose any thing of the daily indulgence of his cul- 
tivated and fastidious appetite is a serious encroach- 
ment on his happiness, — that man needs some- 
thing else, far more than the most timid slave of 
petty scruples needs knowledge. While he is 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 119 

rejoicing in his freedom from a scruple, he is be- 
coming the slave of a lust, — bound and led captive 
by habits of sensual indulgence. There are men 
who abstain from the use of sugar, and wear no 
cotton in their clothing, lest they be compromised 
with the guilt of slavery. There are men to 
whose sensitive conscience the odor of burning 
tobacco is as offensive as it is to unsophisticated 
human nostrils. We may be sorry for the weak- 
ness of their consciences, — especially if they insist 
that their scruples shall be a rule by which to pro- 
nounce on other men's religious sincerity. But, 
after all, dare w^e say that those men, or any others 
equally scrupulous in other and similar matters, 
need the emancipating and liberalizing influence 
of knowledge more than he who is enslaved to the 
continual use of tobacco and can not be persuaded 
to throw off his fetters needs something better than 
mere knowledge ? The slave of a scrupulous con- 
science, much as he needs to add to his virtue 
knowledge, holds a position of moral dignity when 
compared with one who, rejoicing in the freedom 
which his knowledge gives him, is enslaved by a 
factitious appetite for a vile and filthy drug. 



120 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

This, tlien, is the first danger which besets the 
man of knowledge, rising above petty scruples. 
He is in danger on the side of self-indulgence. 
At the same time, — 

2. He is also in danger of acquiring a contempt- 
uous feeling toward those whose consciences are 
more timid and sensitive than his own. His 
knowledge shows him the weakness of other men's 
scruples ; and he is likely to have little sympathy 
with them on some points, at least, on which their 
conscientious feelings are deep and strong. While 
he seems to them to be wanting in virtue, or the 
will to do right, they seem to him to be deficient 
in common sense ; and while they, perhaps, censure 
him in their bigotry, he, in his pride, with knowl- 
edge that "pufFeth up," despises them. 

Such seem to have been the reciprocal feelings 
of parties in the Corinthian church. While those 
who fell into the error of excessive sciiipulousness, 
in regard to things offered to idols, could hardly 
avoid condemning others for what seemed to them 
a participation in the guilt of idolatry, some, on 
the other hand, of those whose knowledge emanci- 
pated them from all superstitious regard for the 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED, 121 

idol, and who felt that they could eat of any thing, 
any where, in the spirit of thankfulness to the liv- 
ing and true God, were proud of their knowl- 
edge, and despised the weakness of their brethren. 
As to the effect of their conduct on other people, 

— what was that to them ? " Why," said they, 
" is my liberty judged of another man's con- 
science ? " They felt that they could eat, even in 
an idol's temple, without any inw^ard homage to 
the idol ; and as long as they kept their own 
conscience pure, they esteemed it of little conse- 
quence what effect their conduct might produce on 
the w^eak minds of others. In reference to such 
results, the apostle said, " Knowledge puffeth up," 

— that is, inflates the mind with pride, — " but 
love edifieth. And if any man think that he 
knoweth any thing," — that is, if he values him- 
self upon his knowledge, — " he knoweth nothing 
yet as he ought to know." Knowledge that has 
this effect is all in vain. Alas for that man whose 
supposed enlargement and elevation of views has 
broken the chain of sympathy between him and 
those whom he regards as his w^eaker brethren ! 

3. It is also to be observed that this man of 



122 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

knowledge is in danger of adopting lax opinions In 
regard to duty, and thus gradually blunting and 
benumbing his moral sensibilities till he becomes 
an apostate. He thinks much of his Christian 
liberty, his superiority to merely outward rules, 
his illumination and guidance by great principles 
living within him. To him — if the heart is 
right, — that is, if the disposition and ultimate aim 
of the mind are right — the particulars of outward 
conduct seem to be of little consequence. His 
religion, he says, is of the heart and spirit ; it 
does not consist in conformino; to the customs or 
the prejudices of other religious people, — in wear- 
ing a particular style of dress or a particular cast 
of countenance, — in avoiding particular sorts of 
company or particular amusements, — in going to 
prayer-meetings, — no, nor in any special times or 
rules of private prayer. Surely there is danger for 
him. Surelv he needs somethins: for ballast to his 
knowledo-e. The danger is that his reliorion will be 
a mere ethereal essence which evaporates and is 
gone. The danger is that, in his self-reliance and 
his freedom from prejudices, he will throw himself 
into one temptation and another, — will be con- 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 123 

formed to tliis world in one particular and another, 
— will fall into one worldly folly and another, — 
till his devotional habits and feelings are entirely 
gone, — till his sympathies with Christ and with 
Christ's work in the world, and the communion of 
his heart with the people of God, are broken, — 
till his conscience, sophisticated and blinded by 
false reasonings, is seared, — till he becomes at 
last an apostate from the gospel. How many in- 
stances have there been of such backsliding and 
ultimate apostasy, which began in petty self-in- 
dulgences and the contempt of petty scruples ! 

On this part of the subject, the Apostle Paul 
warns his Corinthian friends most distinctly and 
impressively. He warns those who, with an un- 
due reliance upon their knowledge and upon the 
consciousness of a right intention, were not afraid 
to sit down at an idolatrous feast, or even in the 
idol's temple. He warns them by the example 
of those Israelites who, in the journeying under 
Moses through the desert, were tempted into 
intercourse and conformity with idolaters. " All 
these things," he says, " happened to them for 
ensamples, and they are written for our admoni- 



124 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

tion, upon whom the ends of the world are come. 
Wherefore let him who thinketh he standeth, take 
heed lest he fall." 

These are some of the dangers which beset the 
man of knowledo;e, as the word knowledo-e is here 
used, — the man whose enlarged views of moral 
questions have freed him from the power of super- 
stitious or unenlightened scruples. To guard him 
against such dangers, he needs something else, — 
somethino; without which knowledo;e is unbal- 
anced, — something without which his knowledge, 
in its highest attainments, is incomplete. That 
somethino; else is Christian self-control. He must 
add to knowledge temperance. 

What, then, do I mean by temperance? Of 
course, we need not take the word in any techni- 
cal or narrow sense. Temperance, as a Christian 
grace, is not the mere opposite of drunkenness. 
It is not mere abstinence from intoxicating drinks 
and drugs. It is not merely a wise and health- 
preserving moderation in the use of food and 
drink. The word has a broader and higher mean- 
ing. Temperance, in the Christian sense, is the 
habitual and manful struggle of the soul against 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 125 

inferior and sensual appetites. It is the purpose 
and habit of striving to subdue the passions. It is 
the quickened spirit's watching, toil, and strife to 
keep the body in due subjection, and to conquer 
the propensities that war against the soul. This, 
as we see at once, is a very different thing from 
oriental, Jewish, or monkish asceticism, and from 
the scrupulousness which ascetic notions generate. 
It does not regard the infliction of bodily penances 
as meritorious or holy, or as the condition or 
method of acceptance with God. It only sets it- 
self in watchfulness and conflict against those 
temptations which assail the soul, and seek to 
bring it into subjection to sin, through the appe- 
tites and propensities of the inferior nature. 
Christian temperance is self-control, inspired by 
faith, animated by manly conscientiousness, and 
guided by knowledge. 

Let us, then, call up before our thoughts, and 
portray to ourselves if we can, the man who, 
liaving added virtue to faith and knowledge to 
virtue, adds to knowledge temperance. Look at 
him under the influence of this disposition or 
habit, and see how he is guarded against the perils 



126 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

which beset the man to whose knowledge tem- 
perance is not added. 

1. The first element in the idea of this tem- 
perance is that it puts the man on his guard 
against all the forms of self-indulgence. He feels, 
not blindly and superstitiously, but intelligently, 
that the indulgence of any appetite, in such a way 
or to such an extent as to bring him under its 
])ower, is full of peril to his souFs prosperity. 
He is therefore fixed upon securing, by the help 
of Christ, the just dominion of his spiritual nature 
over all inferior desires. His body, with its 
organs, senses, and appetites, is to him his vehicle, 
his instrument, his temporary tenement, not him- 
self; and it is a great and constant care with 
him not to be degraded or fettered by it. The 
ascetic or the mystic — for asceticism and mysti- 
cism are ordinarily related to each other — regards 
the body as a clog, a burden, a prison, an enemy. 
His theory, with the practice founded on it, puts 
dishonor on his Maker, and cuts him off fi'om the 
sources of spiiitual strength. But the believer, 
adding to knowledge temperance, regards the 
complex constitution of his mortal existence, and 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 127 

all the circumstances of his probation^ as arranged 
in the wisdom and the love of God. He is in the 
body not for the sake of penance and suffering, 
but that in the body he may serve his Maker ; 
tliat through these senses he may become ac- 
quainted with the outward and material creation ; 
that by these organs he may come into active 
communication with the world in which God has 
placed him, and in which he has a work to do for 
God ; and that, by the discipline of temptation 
and of suffering, which the conditions of this life 
involve, he may be trained for a better life to 
come. Thus he puts himself intelligently on his 
guard, lest, by the temptations incident to his resi- 
dence in the body, his soul be brought into bond- 
age, 

2. As he thus adds to knowledge temperance, 
he grows in liumility and gentleness. Habitually 
watchful, he becomes habitually aware of his own 
weakness, his dangers, and his unworthiness. He 
may understand, he may pity, his brother's undis- 
criminating and unguided scrupulousness ; but he 
does not therefore despise that brother, nor with- 
hold from him a brother's sympathy. That his 



128 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

brother is afraid of the very food which idolatrons 
priests have handled, — that his brother, unable 
to distinguish the circumstances of an evil thing 
from the thing itself, hates even " the garment 
spotted by the flesh," and runs into weak ex- 
cesses of conscientious antipathy, — does not seem 
to him so unreasonable, nor is it so offensive to 
his feelings, as the proud and self-conceited fool- 
hardiness that rushes into perilous temptations 
without fear. Thus his knowledge, completed 
and balanced by temperance, instead of puffing 
him up and separating him from a salutary sym- 
pathy with less enlightened brethren, makes him 
more and more helpful to them. Not having 
lost his sympathy with them, he does not lose 
their confidence, and therefore he does not lose 
the natural and unresisted influence over them 
which knowledge ought to give him. His knowl- 
edge becomes, in a sense, available for their use. 
His intelligent habit of moral discrimination helps 
to guide them. 

3. In proportion to his proficiency in the habit 
of watchful self-restraint, his inclinations and im- 
pulses, instead of controlling his judgment of what 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 129 

is duty, and thus blinding his conscience, become 
themselves subject to the rule of truth and the 
sense of obligation. Such is the constitution of 
our nature, that when the passions are held in 
subjection to reason and to faith, they gradually 
learn to bear the yoke without resistance. At 
first, there may be many a conflict between the 
holy purpose of self-denial and the untamed pas- 
sion excited by temptation and struggling for the 
mastery over conscience. But each victory over 
temptation weakens the enemy within ; each effect- 
ual curbing of wayward and groveling inclina- 
tions gives the man more power of self-control ; 
his nature, perverted, corrupted, and in a sense 
deranged and disorganized by sin, recovers more 
and more of the just balance of its power ; he 
approaches ever nearer to a full experience of that 
apostolic benediction, — "The very God of peace 
sanctify you wholly ; and your whole spirit and 
soul and body be preserved blameless to the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

This Christian temperance — this holy and 
vigilant self-restraint — is what the apostle Paul 
commends, most seriously, to those knowing ones 



130 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

at Corinth, whose knowledge had inflated them 
and led them into fearful perils. " Know ye not 
that they who run in a race, run all, but one re- 
ceiveth the prize. So run that ye may obtain. 
And every man that striveth for the mastery in 
the public games is temperate in all things. Now 
they do it to obtain a fading crown, but we an 
unfading. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; 
so fight I not as one that beateth the air ; but I 
keep my body under, and bring it unto subjection, 
lest that, by any means, when I have preached 
to others, I myself should be a castaway." Such 
is Paul's commentary on adding to knowledge 
temperance. 

Let me now give you a few brief rules that 
may help you in your endeavor to cultivate this 
habit of Christian self-control. 

I. Fill your mind with just views of the dignity 
of your nature as created in God's image, and of 
the grandeur of your destiny as made for immor- 
tality. Be always conscious of what you are and 
what you were made for. 

II. Be watchful against occasional temptations 
and against the formation of self-indulgent habits. 



FREEDOM SELF-GOVERNED. 131 

Occasional temptations carry away the unwatch- 
ful and therefore unguarded soul ; and as they 
come, one after another, they bind that soul, ere 
it is aware, as with a chain of iron. Be watchful. 
Have you any self-indulgent practice or habit 
which it would be better for you to renounce? 
Have you any circle of companions whose ex- 
ample and whose society tempts you to self-indul- 
gence? When I see a young man undertaking 
to be a Christian, and yet spending annually a 
larger amount in cigars than he can afford to 
give away, I am afraid for him. 

III. Embrace such opportunities of self-denial 
as God gives you. Opportunities of self-denial 
are to be found, not made. You have no need 
to go out of the world into a desert or a cell, in 
order to deny yourself. God will take care that 
your moral nature suffers no harm for want of 
opportunities to deny yourself, and to bring your 
impulsive and wayward passions into subjection. 

IV. Keep the end of life in view, and the end 
of all things. This will help you in your watch- 
fulness. This will stimulate you to seize upon 
every legitimate opportunity of self-denial. This 



132 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUEE. 

will quicken your consciousness of what you are 
and what you are made for. To remember that 
your life is only a vapor, and that the visible 
world itself is passing away like a shadow, will 
take away the glare and show of the things that 
deceive you, — will help you to see things as they 
are, and to walk as in the light of an opening 
eternity. 



CHAPTER yn. 



STEADFASTNESS 



" He that endureth to the end shall be saved." Matt. x. 22. 

"In your patience possess ye your souls." Luke xxi. 19. 

" Tribulation worketh patience ; and patience, experience." 
Rom. V. 3, 4. 

" Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious 
power, unto all patience." Col. i. 11. 

" Not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and 
patience inherit the promises." Heb. vi. 12. 

" Cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great 
recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that 
after ye have done the will of God, ye may receive the prom- 
ise." Heb. X. 35, 36. 

" Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." 
Heb. xii. 1. 

"Giving all diligence — add to temperance, patience." 2 
Pet. i. 5, 6. 



CHAPTER VII. 

STEADFASTNESS. 

Reading the Bible. Understandest thou what thou readest 1 
The word " patience " in the New Testament. Steadfastness a 
distinct element of Christian character. How it may be attained : 
1. As the legitimate result of faith, virtue, knowledge, and self- 
control; 2. By watching against temptations to instability; 
3. By habitually regarding the things which are not seen. 

I CAN not undertake to lead you and help you 
in the endeavor to attain the completeness and 
symmetry of a truly Christian character, unless I 
may assume that you are carefully and teachahly 
reading the Bible. Such reading of the Bible, 
more than any thing else, brings you into com- 
munication with the mind of Christ, and with the 
influence of the Holy Spirit. Yet, in your read- 
ing of the Bible, you may often feel the need of 
some friendh^ guidance and explanation. It will 
not be strange, if sometimes you find yourself in 
sympathy with the Ethiopian courtier, who, when 
Philip asked him, " Understandest thou what thou 



136 ' CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

readest ? " replied, " How can I, except some man 
should guide me ? " 

For example, in your reading of the New Testa- 
ment, you find that " patience " is frequently spok- 
en of as something essential to the formation of a 
Christian character and the progress of a Chris- 
tian life. What is the meaning of that word 
" patience," when it is thus used in the New 
Testament ? If I can help you to a clearer un- 
derstanding of that word, as it meets you so often 
in the reading of the Bible, perhaps I may bring 
your mind into a closer contact with the mind of 
Christ and the teaching of the Spirit. 

Let me say, then, that there are two words 
in the New Testament which are sometimes trans- 
lated patience. One of those two words signifies 
slowness to anger, — indisposition to sudden re- 
sentment or complaint ; and this is very nearly 
what we call patience, in our ordinary use of the 
word. The other — which is much more fre- 
quently used in describing the Christian character 
and life — signifies rather what we mean by such 
expressions as " continuing," " holding out," 
"enduring," "persevering" against opposition or 



STEADFASTNESS. 137 

temptation of whatever sort. The idea of stead- 
fastness or perseverance rarely occurs in the New 
Testament under any other form than this. It 
is the idea of enduring and holding out in the face 
of adverse influences. Read the words in which 
our Saviour explains his own parable of the sower : 
" They on the rock are they who when they hear, 
receive the word with joy ; and these have no 
root, who for a while believe, and in time of 
temptation fall away. And that which fell 
among thorns are they, who, when they have 
heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and 
riches, and pleasures of this life, and bring no 
fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground 
are they who in an honest and good heart, 
having heard the word, keep it and bring forth 
fruit ^Yith jMtienee.''' In other words, they bring 
forth fruit by persevering in their faith, their 
virtue, their knowledge, and their earnest and 
watchful self-control. Observe how the apostle 
Paul represents God as awarding eternal life to 
them who seek for glory and honor and immortal 
ity " by patient continuance in well doing." That 
"patient continuance" is simply perseverance; 



138 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

and what the apostle says is nothing else than 
what Christ himself says, using essentially the 
same word, " He that shall endure to the end, the 
same shall be saved." Just this is the " patience " 
which the apostle speaks of when he says, " We 
glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation 
worketh patience, and patience experience." He 
and his fellow-believers, " rejoicing in hope of the 
glory of God," exulted even in their tribulations, 
knowing that through the grace to which they had 
been introduced by faith, tribulation would be the 
occasion and the means of disciplining them to 
patience, or, in other words, would call them to 
exercise, and thus to confirm their steadfastness in 
the Christian life. They knew that from this 
patience or principle of perseverance, tried and 
manifested by tribulation, there would come " ex- 
perience," or the experimental knowledge of 
the gospel and the consequent conviction of its 
truth. In the same sense of the word, it was the 
same apostle's unceasing prayer for the brethren 
whom he especially remembered before God, that 
they might be " strengthened with all might ac- 
cording to God's glorious power, to all patience and 



STEADFASTNESS. 139 

long-sufFering," — that is, to steadfastness com- 
bined with meekness under injuries and sorrows. 
So, when he gave thanks for the spiritual pros- 
perity and fruitfuhiess of those who had behoved 
under his ministry, he "remembered without ceas- 
ing," not only their " work of faith and labor of 
love," but also their "patience," (or steadfastness) 
" of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ ; " for it was 
evidently his belief that as works of Christian 
duty spring naturally from a living faith, and as 
love naturally manifests itself in labor for those 
beloved, so steadfastness, or an unwearied perse- 
verance, is the appropriate manifestation and re- 
sult of Christian hope. In the same sense of the 
word, the believer, compassed about with the great 
cloud of witnesses, is to run his appointed race 
"with pdtienee^^'' — that is, with steady persever- 
ance, — "looking to Jesus, — who, for the joy 
that was set before him, endured the cross, despis- 
ing the shame : " — endurance is patience ; — he 
was crucified without being turned from his 
purpose. "Where such " patience has its perfect 
work," there, in the estimation of the apostle 
James, the Christian character is " perfect and 



140 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

entire, wanting nothing," as if all the graces 
of holiness were formed and manifested by the 
discipline that tries the believer's steadfastness. 
The same writer, in another passage, having ex- 
horted his readers to equanimity and cheerfulness 
under vexation, persecution, and the pains of hope 
deferred, by reminding them of the nearness and 
certainty of eternal things, proceeds to speak 
again of the same "patience;" "Behold we 
count them happy who endure^^ — that is, who 
are steadfast when tried. " Ye have heard of the 
'patience " — the steadfastness — " of Job, and have 
seen " — in his case — " the end of the Lord," — 
the completion of God's plan, — " how the Lord 
is very pitiful and of tender mercy." So, in the 
visions of God that were granted to his servant 
in Patmos, when the vail of time was torn away, 
and he looked down the Ions; reach of comiiio; 
ages, he exclaimed, once and again, as he foresaw 
the successive outbreaks of the powers of darkness 
against the redeemed, " Here is the j^atience and 
faith of the saints ! " " Here is the patience of 
the saints ! Here are they that keep the com- 
mandments of God and the faith of Jesus." That 



STEADFASTNESS. 141 

"patience of the saints" is their constancy of 
steadfastness. 

It is not strange, then, that the apostle Peter 
finds a place for this "patience" in his catalogue 
of the qualities that make the completeness and 
symmetry of Christian character. Nor is it diffi- 
cult to see what he means by " patience." He 
means steadfastness. He means that weight and 
force of purpose which holds out in the face of all 
opposing influences. Having admonished his 
readers not to let their faith be that maimed, dead 
faith which is disjoined from the manly purpose of 
well-doing, — and not to let their virtue be that 
erring, servile, bigoted consciousness, which is dis- 
joined from knowledge, — and, again, not to let their 
knowledge be that proud, reckless, dangerous 
knowledge which is disjoined from temperance, or 
the purpose and habit of self-control, — he proceeds 
to counsel them that to their temperance, to all 
this combination of qualities, they add steadfast- 
ness, stability of character, the element and force 
of perseverance in well-doing. 

But here, perhaps, a question arises in your 
mind : If the " patience " on which the Scriptures 



142 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

insist so much is nothing else than steadfastness 
or perseverance, how is it that *' patience " in this 
sense of the word is set down distinctly as one of 
the elements of a Christian character ? How can 
it be made out that perseverance is a distinct thing 
from faith, or virtue, or spiritual intelligence, or 
temperance, or godliness, or brotherly affection, or 
charity ? Is it not rather something essential to 
the very being of faith, of virtue, and of all the 
rest, and, therefore, indistinguishable from them ? 
I answer : It is true, no doubt, that the com- 
mencement of a really Christian life does, by the 
grace of God, involve the certainty of its continu- 
ance to the end. Yet this certainty depends not 
on the intrinsic nature of the Christian life, but on 
the gracious purpose and promise of God. There 
is no contradiction and no absurdity in supposing 
that there may be faith and virtue and knowl 
edge and temperance and every other trait of 
Christian character, and after all a fatal defect of 
perseverance. Hence it is that perseverance is as 
distinctly insisted on by the Holy Spirit in the 
Scriptures, and is made as really a condition of 
final salvation as faith or repentance. A man 



STEADFASTNESS. 143 

may make ever so much proficiency for a season ; 
he may advance ever so near to the goal ; but if 
to all this he does not add steadfastness, — if he 
does not continue to the end, — he falls with them 
who draw back to perdition. 

This, however, does not complete the answer. 
When we see a man drawing back to perdition 
from what seemed to be the beginning of a Chris- 
tian life, we may indeed infer, (and the Scriptures 
authorize us to infer,) from the fact of his falling 
away, that all his religiousness was, in some 
respect, unsound and hollow from the begin- 
ning. In this sense, it may be admitted that a 
true repentance will be a persevering repent- 
ance, a true faith will be a persevering faith, a 
true discipleship will manifest itself in the end as 
a discipleship which endures to the end. But, at 
the same time, it is true that there may be faith, 
and with faith virtue, and with virtue knowledge, 
and with knowledge temperance, without all that 
stability which Christ and his apostles mean 
when they speak of " patience." There may be 
an instability not amounting to actual and final 
apostasy, — a deficiency of weight and force in the 



144 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

character of the man, — an unsteadiness of aim 
and purpose, — which weakens all the elements 
of Christian character. Temperance — the attempt 
to subdue the appetites and passions, and to bring 
the whole man under the control of truth — may 
be irregular and unsteady. Virtue — the living 
conscientiousness — may act now and then with 
power, and at other times the mind may be di- 
verted from its purpose, and the conscience be- 
come less active and controllino;. This shows us 
what the apostle Peter means by faith, virtue, 
knowledge, and temperance, without steadfastness. 
He means that sort of Christian character w^hich is 
governed by impulses, occasions, sympathies, and 
excitements, rather than by the force of inflexible 
principles and well formed habits. How many 
instances are there of that sort in every place ! 
How many professed disciples, who are zealous 
and joyful for a while in a time of general reviv- 
ing, and seemingly earnest in every good word 
and work, but whose religious life, like the physi- 
cal life of those animals which have their winter 
of torpor, hibernates through the interval from one 
revived and joyful season to another ! How many 



STEADFASTNESS. 145 

hopeful converts are there, who seem to run well 
for a season, but are strangely and sadly hindered ! 
How many who received the word with joy, and, 
as we thought, were adding virtue to faith, and 
knowledge to virtue, and temperance to knowl- 
edge, but, after a while, when special excitements 
and sympathies had become less effective, relaxed 
their dihgence ! How many who have no root in 
themselves, and so endure only for a time ! 

You see, then, how it is that steadfastness, or 
patience, is a different thing from temperance, and 
different from those other elements of Christian 
character with which it is associated. Virtue, or 
manly well-doing, is the legitimate attendant and 
the natural product of faith, and yet there may be 
a faith in which the element of virtue has not yet 
been fairly brought out. Knowledge, or the power 
of moral discrimination, — which acts intelligently 
and with the sense of freedom, instead of acting 
in a purblind subjection to formulas, — is necessary 
to the completeness of the virtue which springs 
from faith ; and virtue itself, in its own legitimate 
influence, leads the mind on to this sort of knowl- 
edge. Yet there may be virtue which is defective in 

10 



146 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

this resjDect, not having been developed into knowl- 
edge, and wliich is, therefore, narrow, censorious, 
and servile. In like manner, knowledge, with all 
its power of discrimination, is incomplete, if it does 
not include a vivid sense of the duty and necessity 
of self-control, or if it does not actually hold in 
check the inferior impulses and passions ; and the 
man who has added to virtue knowledge will 
naturally watch against temptations of this kind. 
Yet there may be knowledge to which temperance 
is not joined, and which is, therefore, so one-sided 
and unbalanced as to be dangerous by tending to 
licentiousness of living. Just so temperance, or 
the purpose and attempt to subjugate the inferior 
passions, is incomplete, feeble, and fruitless, with- 
out steadfastness ; and it naturally tends to com- 
plete itself by working itself out into a firm sta- 
bility of soul. Yet there may be a fervent temper- 
ance, striving to discipline the desires of the flesh 
and of the mind, and to bring them into subjec- 
tion, which, not having yet achieved its victory, 
is too dependent on impulses, occasions, and sym- 
pathies, and which is, therefore, fitful and unstable, 
■ — a temperance to which the grace of steadfastness 
has not been added. 



STEADFASTNESS. 147 

We come, then, to the more directly practical 
question, How shall we add to the purpose of 
self- control this grace of steadfastness ? What 
method and measures can we use with ourselves 
to develop, in the beautiful combination of faith, 
virtue, knowledge, and temperance, that higher 
form of a symmetrical Christian character, which 
is seen when to all the rest is added — or rather 
when from all the rest there is produced — sta- 
bility or perseverance, as opposed to a mere im- 
pulsiveness that moves or stops, like the wheels 
of the windmill that cease to revolve when the 
breezes are still, — or that rises and falls, like the 
mercury in the barometer, with the variations of 
atmospheric pressure. This stability is properly a 
distinct aim and purpose of the Christian self- 
discipline. • This weight and firmness of character 
— with its steadiness of movement in the Chris- 
tian life — is not to be attained without attentive 
effort, and may be attained by diligence in the 
use of the " all things necessary to life and god- 
liness" which are given to us "through the 
knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and 



148 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

I offer, then, to your attention these practical 
suggestions. 

I. Stability of Christian character is, in one 
sense, a natural result of faith, virtue, knowledge, 
and temperance, as these qualities have been here- 
tofore illustrated. The character that is to stand 
immovable amid the fluctuations of external in- 
fluence, like a light-house amid the waves, must 
have for its foundation a firm belief in the great 
disclosures which God has made concerning things 
eternal. On that foundation there must stand an 
earnest and strenuous purpose to do God's will, — 
a purpose that sets the whole man at work. That 
purpose of well-doing must enrich the mind with 
a practical knowledge of the great principles by 
which the moral sense is guided to the discern- 
ment of duty, and is emancipated from bondage 
to narrow, slavish, blinding formulas. That 
knowledge, the enlightened and cultivated power 
of moral discernment, must put the man upon his 
guard against the misleading and degrading power 
of inferior appetites ; and, while teaching him the 
necessity, must train him to the habit of a free 
and Christian self-control. Such a character, 



STEADFASTNESS. 149 

growing up from faith into virtue, from virtue into 
knowledge, and from knowledge into temperance, 
grows naturally, though not without diligence to 
that end, into a steadfastness which no changes of 
condition, no caprices of fashion, no ebb or flow 
of popular opinion or popular excitement shall be 
able to overcome. Remember, then, that your 
stability of Christian character must not be a mere 
appliance of external props and aids, but some- 
thing intrinsic in the character itself, like the 
stability of an oak, that holds with a living grasp to 
the soil in which it grew from the acorn, and that 
stands the stronger for all the winds that blow 
upon it. Let yours be the stability of that self- 
balanced character which is formed by the union 
and cohesion of these great moral forces, faith, 
virtue, knowledge, temperance. 

II. At the same time, it is not unimportant to 
say that the temptations to instability must be 
watchfully avoided and resisted. A little thought- 
fulness will make you know what those tempta- 
tions are, and how easily they beset you. Beware 
of them, whatever they may be in your case. 
Beware of a frivolous and trifling habit of mind. 



150 CHRISTIAN- SELF-CULTURE. 

Many a painful instance of religious instability 
comes from negligence on this point. Remember 
that life, in this world of probation, is a serious 
and earnest affair ; and beware of those compan- 
ions, those books, those amusements, those views 
of life and duty, that make you thoughtless when 
you ought to be in earnest. Know what your 
weaknesses are. Know on what side you are 
likely to be assailed. Know at what point it is 
that, in your mind, the principle of self-indul- 
gence and self- pleasing is likely to prevail over 
the principle of duty. Then to that self-knowl- 
edge add a more jealous self-watchfulness and a 
more resolute self-control. Thus temperance, in 
the large and Christian sense, shall be, in the 
growth of your religious character, the parent of 
stability and perseverance. Self-indulgence, in 
one form or another, — a habit of pleasing one's 
self, — a yielding of the mind to impulses and dis- 
positions that ought to be held in subjection, — 
is the chief and proximate cause of religious in- 
stability. It is not by accident, nor without a 
serious meaning, that the grace of steadfastness is 
named by an apostle in close connection with the 



STEADFASTNESS. 151 

grace of self-control. Remember her who lingered 
and looked back, when God's angel was leading 
her to safety. Forget the things which are be- 
hind, if you would press toward the mark for the 
prize. 

III. Above all, let your faith, your conscien- 
tiousness, your knowledge, your self-denial, be 
continually reinforced by the contemplation of 
God and of things invisible and eternal. This 
habit of mind — and nothing else when this is 
wanting — gives seriousness, gravity, and im- 
movable strength to religious purposes and affec- 
tions. 



CHAPTER Vm. 



GODLINESS 



"Behold, he prayeth." Acts ix. 11. 

" Thou, wlien thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is in secret ; 
and thy Father who seeth in secret will reward thee openly." 
Matt. vi. G. 

"Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the 
Spirit, and watching tliereunto with all perseverance." Eph. 
vi. 18. 

" Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanks- 
giving." Col. iv. 2. 

" Exercise thyself unto godliness. For bodily exercise prof- 
iteth little : hut godliness is profitable unto all things, having 
promise of tlie life that now is, and of that which is to come." 

1 Tim. iv. 7, 8. 

" Giving all diligence, add ... to patience godliness." 

2 Pet. i. 6. 

" The doctrine which is according to godliness." 1 Tim. 
vi. 3. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GODLINESS. 

Intercourse with God. Christianity is "godliness." The 
reenthronement of God in the soul. Progress from faith 
onward. Elements of godliness : the " fear of God ; " the 
habit of prayer ; the habit of praise. Godliness, if genuine, 
presupposes faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, steadfast- 
ness, and is their vital power. How godliness is added to 
patience. 

The Christian life is a life of intercourse with 
God. " Behold, he prayeth," as it was said of 
Saul when he had submitted himself to Christ, 
may be said of every one in whom the life of 
spiritual renovation and progress has begun. If 
you have entered on a Christian course, you have 
already begun to pray, believing that God is the 
rewarder of them who diligently seek him. You 
acknowledge the authority and embrace the prom- 
ise of that saying, " Thou, when thou prayest, 
enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy 
door, pray to thy Father who is in secret ; and 



156 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

thy Father who seeth in secret will reward thee 
openly.*' A praying man, " praying always with 
all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and 
watching thereunto with all perseverance and 
supplication," is a godly man. 

" In all thy ways acknowledge God." Look 
to him continually, cherishing the sense of your 
relation to him, and of his holy and loving pres- 
ence ever surrounding you. Let all your under- 
takings be " begun, continued, and ended in 
him." This is godliness. 

, The word which in the New Testament is 
translated " godliness " signifies worship, or the 
sentiment and habit of reverence, with the added 
idea that it is the right kind of worship. Some- 
times the word is used as a name for the true 
religion, — the religion which acknowledges and 
honors the living and true God, revealed in the 
person of Christ his son ; and sometimes it is used 
as denoting that particular trait or habit of a re- 
ligious life which the word particularly describes, 
— the habit of recognizing God, and communing 
with him in acts of spiritual worship. 

In the former aj^plication, the word is beauti- 



GODLINESS. 157 

fully suggestive. The religion which the gospel 
proclaims and establishes — the religion to which 
Christ recovers men by his redeeming and renew- 
ing work — the religion of the kingdom of God 
on earth — the religion which the Church, made 
up of all the redeemed and holy, maintains in its 
faith, in its teaching and testimony, and in its 
practice — is godliness, the reverent knowledge 
and service of the living God. Coming into a 
world long darkened by estrangement from God 
and ignorance of him, it dispels that darkness by 
restoring the knowledge and the free and loving- 
worship of him whose presence, seen by faith, 
illuminates all worlds. It reenthrones God in hu- 
man thoughts and affections. Wherever it goes, 
with its victories over unbelief and sin, voices 
as of herald angels proclaim, " Behold the tab- 
ernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell 
with them, and they shall be his people, and God 
himself shall be with them and be their God." 

Godhness, then, in the more definite use of the 
word as descriptive of personal character, is noth- 
ing else than the same reenthronement of God 
in an individual soul. It is that particular aspect 



158 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

of a Christian life which is seen in the intercourse 
of thought and affection between the individual 
soul and God. As the world lying in wicked- 
ness is a profaned and dishonored temple which 
the gospel, in its progress, is to cleanse, and in 
which it is to reestablish God's spiritual and 
accepted worship, — so the individual soul, in its 
apostate condition, is a desecrated temple ; and 
when the lustration of that living temple has 
been performed, — when the fire of sacrifice has 
been kindled within on the reestablished altar, 

— when the thoughts and affections of that soul 
have become habitually fragrant to God with 
sweet incense of a penitent and loving worship, 

— that is godliness. It is the conscious inter- 
course of the soul with God. As distinguished 
from the other elements of a Christian character, 
it is the habit and spirit of devotion, — that state 
of mind in which God is consciously present, 
the object of trust and love, as well as of awe. 
It is the soul's obedience to the precept, " Pray 
without ceasing : in every thing give thanks." 

Perhaps I may show you how the habit and 
the living spirit of devotion are related to other 



GODLINESS. 159 

elements of Christian character, by representing 
to you, if I can, the progress of an earnest mind, 
as the characteristics of the new man are succes- 
sively formed in the heart and manifested in the 
life. The man, we will suppose, has been made 
to feel, with some degree of distinctness, his own 
estrangement from God, and his need of a Saviour 
who can bring him back to the fountain of light 
and life. To him, in that state of mind, the gospel 
comes. It unvails before him the character of God, 
the dread realities of the infinite hereafter, and 
the way of salvation by the reconciling blood of 
Christ and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit. 
He receives that gospel as true ; he accepts its 
offers as his hope for eternity ; he yields himself 
to be guided by its teachings ; he becomes a be- 
liever. This is the beginning of his Christian 
progress. He has faith, — not a merely specula- 
tive recepticfti of the gospel, but a confidence in 
it, — a living faith, which, from the moment of 
its commencement in his soul, is the commence- 
ment of a new and spiritual life. In such a faith 
is involved, undoubtedly, all that makes, when 
fully developed, a matured and completed Chris- 



160 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

tian character; just as the oak that has braved 
the storms of a thousand winters was once in- 
cluded in a tender sprout from a half-buried acorn 
— so tender that it might have been crushed by 
an infant's foot. But his faith will grow into 
that matured and completed Christian character, 
only as he gives all diligence to a course of con- 
tinued and divinely guided self-discipline. To 
such diligence his faith is prompting him. And 
now as he inquires what God, what Christ would 
have him do, his conscience is quickened by the 
impulse of this new princii^le of faith ; his moral 
sense acquires new sensibiHty and power ; he forms 
not the purpose only, but the habit also, of doing 
always that which he understands to be the will 
of God ; and thus he adds to his faith virtue. 
As he pursues this course, training himself to the 
habit of well-doing, his mind already touched and 
stimulated in its intellectual faculty t)y the power 
of faith in things not seen, acquires a more famil- 
iar acquaintance with the comprehensive princi- 
ples of duty; and, by the practice of inquiring 
what is right in order to do right, he rises above 
mere forms and narrow, unintelligent rules of 



GODLINESS. 161 

duty, and learns to act under the guidance of great 
principles clearly discerned and readily applied. 
Thus he adds to his virtue knowledge. Still 
going on toward the measure of the stature of a 
perfect man in Christ, he becomes conscious that 
nothing is more adverse to his progress, or tends 
more to pervert his moral judgment, and to lead 
him through freedom into licentiousness, than the 
remaining power of those desires and impulses 
which reign unresisted in the natural man. He 
therefore sets himself to subdue those desires and 
impulses, to get the command over himself in all 
his feelings, and to bring his whole nature into a 
cherished subjection to truth and God. He adds 
to his knowledge temperance. As he becomes 
more acquainted with himself and with the dan- 
gers that beset his way, he feels more deeply that 
he must never parley with temptation ; that, if he 
is to escape the fate of those who draw back to 
perdition, he must maintain a watchful steadfast- 
ness, and that he can not depend on impulses and 
feelings merely. He gives all diligence to be 
steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the 
work of the Lord. Thus he adds to temperance 
11 



1G2 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

patience, or holy constancy, the patience of the 
saints. 

But this is not the com})lete analysis of Chris- 
tian character or of Christian progress. Faith, 
virtue, knowledge, temperance, and constancy, 
must be supported and enlivened, each of them and 
all of them, by conscious and constant intercourse 
with God. To every one of them, regarded as 
Christian qualities, the recognition of God, as the 
object of the soul's confidence and homage, is essen- 
tial. A holy constancy of purpose to follow Christ 
and to obey his words is impossible, without con- 
stancy of intercourse with God. He who would 
add to faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and 
to knowledge temperance, and to temperance stead- 
fastness, must add to that steadfastness, and incor- 
porate with it, the habit of reverent and affection- 
ate communion with God ; or his diligence in other 
respects will be to little purpose. He must add 

" TO PATIENCE GODLINESS." 

The idea of o;odliness as distino-uished from other 
Christian qualities, and the relation of godliness in 
that sense to spiritual life and growth, may be set 
in a clearer light, by recollecting what particulars 
arc included in this meaning of the word. 



GODLINESS. 1C3 

One part of godliness is tlie luibitnally-clicrished 
sentiment so often spoken of in the Scriptures as 
" the fear of God." The godly man is one who 
carries in his mind a reverent sense of what God 
is. He cherishes the awing and subduing tliought 
of his own relation to that eternal majesty and 
purity. He realizes, in every i)lace and in every 
employment, the presence of that holiness to which 
all must give account. He learns to see God in 
all the works of creative power and wisdom, and 
to acknowledge him in all the unfolding of his uni- 
versal providence. 

In a true and Christian godliness, the sentiment 
of veneration toward God carries with it a senti- 
ment of love, or of aflPectionate and obedient confi- 
dence. The "fear of God," promi)ted by faith, is 
something very different from a slavish dread. It 
is a foving and adoring awe. It has no place where 
there is not a confiding and cheerful complacency 
in God, an elevating and inspiring fellowship 
with his holiness. The godly man — he who has 
effectually received " the doctrine which is accord- 
ing to godliness " — looks up to his Father in 
heaven, not in dumb terror, but with a humble 



164 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

trust, a free and filial spirit, a mind rejoicing in 
God's power and universal dominion ; and this is 
love toward God. 

Prayer is a part of godliness, and is essential to 
it. Mere contemplation is not godliness, nor is 
mere sentiment and feeling. A man may have a 
philosopher's reach and depth of thought, and may 
meditate sublimely on the being and the works of 
God, and yet not be a godly man. He may have 
a poet's splendor of imagination and tenderness 
of sensibility; the beauty of God's slightest and 
meanest workmanship may fill his eye with tears ; 
and yet he may come far short of being a godly 
man. The devoutness of a Christian life includes 
positive worship. It is not merely the flight of 
lofty thought, nor the flight of raptured feeling. 
It is the soul addressing itself directly and ex- 
pressly to God, in the simplicity of the " belief^hat 
God is and tliat he is the rewarder of them who 
diligently seek him." The godly man regards 
God as his Father, to whose kind ear he can have 
secret and familiar access ; and to that Father he 
addresses himself in all his weakness and in all his 
wants. 



GODLINESS. 165 

Nor does he come to God with his petitions only ; 
he has thanks, adoration, praise to offer at the 
mercy-seat. He loves to breathe out before God 
his reverence, his gratitude, his confidence, and his 
joy, as well as his desires and fears. The true 
description of this godliness is in the Bible, full of 
the thoughts which godly men have ever loved to 
utter in the ear of God. Surely there is no need 
of my taking pains to show you, from the examples 
which the Bible gives you, how large a place 
there is for adoration and joyful praise in the 
soul's intercourse with God. 

Observe, then, how obvious is the mutual de- 
pendence between godliness, or devoutness, and the 
other elements of Christian character. 

A genuine godliness is impossible, except in con- 
nection with the other elements of Christian life 
and progress, and especially with those which have 
been illustrated in the foregoing chapters. Godli- 
ness is something to be " added " not only to faith, 
but to virtue, knowledge, temperance, and stability. 
These are, in some sort, the indispensable pre- 
requisites to a real and habitual communion with 
God. We sometimes see a man setting out to be 



166 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

very godly — a great example of devoutness - - 
without conscientiousness, or moral discrimination, 
or self-control, or steadfastness of character. He 
undertakes to add to his faith godliness, omit- 
ting those gi'aces, intermediate in the catalogtie, 
which are the preliminary conditions of a developed 
and thriving godliness. He does not add to faith 
virtue ; he has no strong and earnest consci- 
entiousness, no fervent pui'pose to do always all 
that is right, and to avoid always all that is wrong. 
He does not add to virtue knowledge ; he does 
not apply habitually in his life those great princi- 
ples of evangelical obedience which make the be- 
liever free indeed. He does not add to knowledore 
temperance ; he has never entered upon that con- 
flict with himself by which he is to acquire the 
control over the passions that pervert the moral 
judgment and sear the moral sensibilities of self- 
pleasing men. He does not add to temperance 
constancy ; he does not combine with his attempt 
or profession of well-doing that steadiness of pur- 
pose, which, having once put the hand to the 
plough, refuses to turn back, or to look back, from 
the furrow, — and which, instead of yielding the 



GODLINESS. 167 

soul to the power of emotions changing like the 
wind, and of impulses fluctuating as the sea, keeps 
it under the direction of principle fixed as the 
north-star. AJl these things he deems of little 
moment ; but before these, and instead of these, is 
to be his godliness. A devotional habit, such as it 
is, he holds to be the whole of Christian character. 
Such godliness is unreal. That man's religion is 
vain. He may deceive himself — he may not be 
that gross, low hypocrite who knows his own 
hypocrisy ; but, by and by, he will be found to be 
a pretender. 

Godliness, in order to be real, must have some 
foundation in the character. It can not stand by 
itself where other elements of Christian progress 
are wanting. Godliness is a renewed and holy 
mind manifesting itself in those affections and 
duties of which God is the immediate object. 
But will the mind exercise itself aright in those 
affections and duties which relate immediately to 
God, if virtue, knowledge, temperance, and con- 
stancy are wanting ? Godliness is the soul's com- 
munion with God. But how can a man commune 
with God — how can he add to his faith godli- 



168 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

ness — when his faith does not quicken his con- 
science to virtue, and make him ahve to all his 
daily duties in all human relations ? — when his 
faith does not inform and enliven his soul with 
the active power of that knowledge which is the 
inspiration of free obedience ? — when his faith 
does not brinor liim into conflict with all the in- 
firmities of his corrupted nature ? — when his 
faith imparts to his character no gravity nor 
constancy ? That man's devoutness, fervent as it 
may seem, much as he may talk of it, much as he 
may rejoice in it, is all pretense or all delusion. 

So, on the other hand, the foregoing traits of 
character are of no worth, unless they lead on to 
godliness, or are connected with it. Let there be 
virtue, knowledge, temperance, and constancy, all 
connected with faith and with each other, as they 
must be in a mind that is truly renewed ; and that 
renewed mind will add to them godliness, for with- 
out the habit of intercourse with God, they are all 
dead. In such intercourse with God, faith finds 
its most invigorating exercise. In such intercourse 
with God, conscience becomes more sensitive to 
evil, and more efficient in its dominion over the vol- 



GODLINESS. 169 

untary powers. In such intercourse with God, the 
soul, beholding the countenance of him who is infi- 
nite purity and infinite love, is inspired with clearer 
perceptions of the law of love ; and, enlarged with 
such knowledge, it learns to walk in the manly 
freedom of the sons of God. In such intercourse 
wdth God, the soul is strengthened for conflict with 
its own infimiities, and learns to strive more eai^ 
nestly and more effectually for the mastery over 
itself. In such communion with God, the soul 
grows strong in the Lord and in the power of his 
might, and thus the believer, divinely armed and 
strengthened, learns to stand above dependence 
upon varying impulses, " steadfast, unmoveable, 
always abounding in the work of the Lord." 

It is important, then, to a full and well-propor- 
tioned Christian growth, that, while you use all 
diligence to make your faith complete in a manly 
well-doing, and your virtue in knowledge, and 
your knowledge in temperance, and your temper- 
ance in a Christian constancy, you use the same 
diligence to develop, as the completeness and 
beauty of your constancy, and in vital connection 
with it, godliness, or the habit and spirit of inter- 
course with God. 



170 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. ' 

But here you may reasonably ask, How shall 
I add to patience godliness ? By what care and 
pains may I acquire these devotional habits of 
thought, of feeling, and of action ? How shall 
this element of a well-proportioned Christian char- 
acter — an element so essential to the complete- 
ness and the life of every other — be so formed 
in me that it shall be self-manifested in my life ? 
There is a simple way of answering such inquiries. 

I. In all thy ways acknowledge Grod. If you 
would have your constancy in the Christian pro- 
fession, and the steadfastness of your well-doing, 
adorned and completed in the beauty of a de- 
votional spirit, so that your face shall shine with 
an unconscious glory caught from intercourse with 
heaven, you must be careful to acknowledge God 
in all your ways, remembering distinctly his pres- 
ence and your relations of dependence and respon- 
sibility. Let every duty — not religious duties 
only, but duties of every class — not great and 
arduous duties only, but all those seemingly less 
important acts of duty which make up so much 
of the labor and discipline of this life — be per- 
formed with a distinct reference to God's will, and 



GODLINESS. 171 

as under his eye. Let every temptation — the 
least as well as the greatest — be encountered 
not in the unsupported strength of a sturdy and 
steadfast will, not by inferior and merely pruden- 
tial considerations, but by throwing the mind 
upon its consciousness of God's presence, and its 
assurance of his gracious help. Thus learn by 
practice and experience the beauty of that rule, 
— " Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or what- 
soever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 

II. Cultivate the habit of observing God in his 
works. The whole creation is full of the Creator. 
Eyes blinded by unbelief can indeed explore the 
creation without discovering the impress of God's 
hand and the gleams of his glory that linger upon 
every thing that he has made. But let not your 
eye be so heedless or so undiscerning. Learn to 
see God as he reveals himself in nature. See him 
in the morning and the evening, — in the beauty 
of the earth, and the radiance of the sky. See 
him in the swelling bud, in the opening blossom, 
in the fruit that blushes as it ripens. See him in 
the rainbow, the shower, the dew, the falling 
snow-flake. See him oh, where can you not 



172 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

see him, if your eye is once opened to discern his 
glory ? Thus shall you find yourself ever more 
and more encompassed with God. Nor is God to 
be regarded as manifested in creation only ; to 
the believing mind, he is continually exhibiting 
himself in his works of providence. Learn to 
acknowledge him as the Supreme Disposer of 
events, without whom no revolution of empire 
shakes and confounds the nations, and without 
whom no sparrow falleth to the ground. See him 
in all the changes that affect your welfare or your 
duties. He gives you daily bread. He appoints 
your daily tasks. He permits, for his own wise 
purposes connected with your highest welfare, 
the temptations that make your daily conflicts. 
When the floods of sorrow overwhelm you, and 
deep calleth to deep, it is the noise of his water- 
spouts that you hear, it is his waves that have 
gone over you. Learn to observe him and ac- 
knowledge him in nature and in providence. 

III. Study to become more ayid more acquainted 
with God in the Bible. See how he reveals him- 
self there to your admiration, your confidence, 
your grateful affection ! See the illustrations of 



GODLINESS. 173 

his goodness, his mercy, his faithfulness, his loving- 
kindness ! See his glory shining upon you from 
the face of Christ ! Trust in him ! Commit 
yourself, in all your interests, to his love and 
power. Fill your mind with his thoughts, as he 
communicates them to you in his Word. Let 
his affections reign in your heart. Let his in- 
dwelling Spirit be the life of your soul. So shall 
you walk with God. So shall you dwell in the 
secret place of the Most High, and abide under 
the tabernacle of the Almighty. 



CHAPTER IX. 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 



" Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love/' 
Eom. xii. 10. 

" As touching brotherly lore, ye need not that I write unto 
you ; for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another/' 

1 Thess. iv. 9. 

" Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth 
through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see 
that ye love one another with a piu-e heart fervently/' 1 Pet. 
i. 22. 

" Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, 
bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, 
long-suflfering ; forbearing one another, and forgiving one 
another ; if any man have a quarrel against any : even as 
Christ forgave you, so also do ye/' Col. iii. 12, 13. 

" Giving all dihgence, add — to godluiess brotherly kindness." 

2 Pet. i. 5, 7. 



CHAPTER IX. 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 



Natural affections — their place in the formation of a Chris- 
tian character. Brotherly kindness in the New Testament. 
The Christian self-discipline adds to godliness brotherly kind- 
ness. Godliness without human sympathies — its defects and 
dangers. Healthful influence of human sympathies on the 
religious life. 

" Without natural affection " is the lowest 
deep of human degradation. It is always to be 
assumed, in dealing even with the most hardened 
of outcasts from society, that however insensible 
he may be to moral obligation and to the fear of 
God, there is somewhere within him a remnant of 
natural affection. If it turns out otherwise, — if 
there is no lingering memory of mother or sister, 
living or dead, of father or brother, of wife or 
child, of teacher or friend, which can be wakened 
into tenderness, — there is no hope for him ; he 
is more than "twice dead;" his moral nature is 

12 



178 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

" plucked up by the roots ; " for these natural 
affections, the ties of sympathy and instinctive 
love which bind us to each other in the special 
relations of human society, are at once the earliest 
and the latest of the divinely provided restraints 
on human selfishness, — the earliest to be felt, the 
latest to lose their power. 

It would be strange, then, if those natural 
affections had no place or part in the formation 
of a Christian character and the progress of the 
Christian life. It would be strange, if we did not 
find the apostles, in those Scriptures which have 
come down to us from them, warning us against 
" bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour 
and evil-speaking," and whatever tends to disturb 
the interchange of kindly feeling in the relations 
that constitute families and friendships and neigh- 
borhoods and chm'ches and commonwealths, and 
exhorting us to '' put on, as the elect of God, 
holy and beloved, deep feelings of sympathy, 
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- 
suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving 
one another, if any man have a complaint against 
any." It would be strange if we did not find 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 179 

them counseling husbands and wives, parents and 
children, masters and servants, to an affectionate 
well-doino; in the relations that bind them to each 
other. Most of all would it be strange if we did 
not find them, and the Master, too, insisting with 
special distinctness on the affection which natu- 
rally springs up between fellow-disciples, partakers 
in a common salvation, worshiping at the same 
mercy-seat, working together in the same blessed 
service, and recognizing each other as brethren in 
Christ. If you would " grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour," you must 
take care not to be wanting in this element of the 
Christian character and of the Christian life. 

The term " brotherly kindness," or " brotherly 
love," as used in the New Testament, seems to 
mean social affection or sympathy, as chat prin- 
ciple of human nature is elevated and sanctified 
by grace in the believer, and particularly as it 
exists amono; believers in their relation to each 
other. I need not undertake to prove that there 
is such a principle in human nature as God made 
it, — a principle of special kindness and sympathy 
between those who are specially connected with 



180 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUEE. 

each other in the bonds that constitute society, — 
a principle by which those who are brought into 
such relations, whether in the family or in the 
neigborhood, whether in the daily studies and 
sports of childhood or in the daily labors of 
maturer years, whether as inhabitants of the same 
village or as citizens in the same commonwealth, — ■ 
are bound together, not merely in the sympathies 
of a common humanity and the vague sentiment 
of philanthropy, but in ties of special affection. 
That there is such a principle in our nature, and 
that God must have designed it for a good purpose, 
is too obvious to be disputed. Whether this prin- 
ciple of special attachment can be analyzed into 
other and simpler elements, is a question of no con- 
sequence here. Let it suffice that there is such a 
principle, and that it belongs to our nature by the 
will of our Creator. This principle, — elevated and 
sanctified by the grace of God, and especially in 
the form of that special affection which springs up 
between Christian believers in their relation to 
each other as members of the household of faith, 
— is what is meant in the New Testament by 
" brotherly kindness," or " brotherly love." 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 181 

You, then, if you would " live godly in Christ 
Jesus," must take care that your godliness be 
completed and adorned, by adding to it brotherly 
kindness. For the guidance of those who under- 
took to be Christians when Christianity was new, 
it was not enough to admonish them that their 
reception of the gospel should not be left incom- 
plete, by being without virtue or a resolute and 
conscientious purpose to do right ; that their con- 
scientiousness should not be misguided by being 
without the enlightening and emancipating effect 
of knowledge ; that their knowledge should not 
be permitted to make them reckless and self-in- 
dulgent, by being without temperance, or manly 
self-control ; that their temperance should not be 
the fluctuating conflict with inclination, which it 
will be if it is temperance without steadfastness ; 
that their steadfastness should not be mere strength 
of will, or force of habit, as it must be, unless, by 
being conjoined with godliness, it becomes a 
steadfast walking with God : — it was also need- 
ful to admonish them that their godliness or de- 
voutness should not be without the softening in- 
fluence of social affection and sympathy. 



182 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

Is it then possible that godhness, or even what 
seems to be godliness, may be separated from 
brotherly kindness ? Ought we not rather to 
presume that inasmuch as man is made for so- 
ciety, and is connected with his fellow-men around 
him by instinctive affections, piety towards God 
must of course be social ; and that the separation 
of it from social sympathies and duties can not 
really be ? In some sense, doubtless, it is true 
that worship asks for society and sympathy ; yet, 
in another sense, the godliness or devoutness of 
the recluse, who shuts liimself up for the sake of 
being religious alone, is not altogether unnatural. 
That particular trait or habit of a religious life 
which we distinguish by the name of godliness 
is the intercourse of the soul with God. It is the 
soul looking up to God, habitually, in veneration, 
love, prayer, praise. In a word, it is worship. 
And wherever worship is really offered, — wheth- 
er in the wilderness or in the city, — whether in 
the closet or in the o-reat cono-reo-ation, — it is 
nothing else than the thoughts and emotions of 
individual minds, offered, consciously and directly, 
to God. All that there is in united worship to 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 183 

guide and quicken the mind is without effect, 
unless the mind thus quickened and guided does, 
itself, as an individual worshiper, address to God 
its own thought and emotion. All is in vain, un- 
less the individual mind, by its own act, is brought 
into communication with God, not tliroiigh the 
minister or the congregation, but directly. De- 
voutness, then, or worship, which is what we 
mean by godliness as an element in a religious 
life, may easily tend to withdraw itself from social 
affections and duties. Inasmuch as private de- 
votion, or the solitary communion of the soul with 
God, is a necessary preparation for public wor- 
ship, — and, on the other hand, a participation in 
public worship, if it is true and fervent, sends 
the worshiper back to his retirement, there to 
renew and pursue his personal intercourse with 
heaven, — we need not wonder if sometimes the 
devout man begins to feel as if no duty were to 
be thought of in comparison with the duty of 
prayer and meditation, and as if the one great 
business of his life were to contemplate with ador- 
ing thoughts the manifestations of God in revela- 
tion and in nature. When his mind has fallen 



184 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

into such a habit, he will naturally begin to feel, 
erelong, as if his human affections and sympa- 
thies, and the relations which bind him to society, 
were a disadvantage to him, — as if solitude were 
better than society for his religious progress and 
enjoyment, — and as if he ought to withdraw as 
much as he may from human fellowship that he 
may spend his life in waiting upon God. Thus 
his religion, if such feelings continue to gi'ow 
upon him, becomes unsocial. He cherishes the 
dream of some retirement wdiere he may be with 
God, and be responsible for no man's welfare but 
his own. The actual character of those around 
him who bear the Christian name is painfully 
incongruous with his ideal ; he sees no benefit to 
be derived from fellowship with them ; and he 
thinks that if he could be freed from the entangle- 
ments of human sympathies and social duties, he 
could grow in grace. His godliness is honest and 
earnest ; but it is one-sided, and, therefore, incom- 
plete. 

But what are the defects and dangers of such a 
godliness ? This religion, in which the devotional 
sentiment is not properly united with human affec- 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 185 

tions and sympathies, — this self-isolating godli- 
ness that enjoys itself only in the shade, and lives 
only in its own musings, — what are its tenden- 
cies in respect to the completeness of Christian 
character ? Can it attain to the stature of a per- 
fect man in Christ? You may learn something 
from an intelligent answer to this inquiry. 

The most obvious answer is, that godliness, dis- 
joined from brotherly kindness, tends to an inac- 
tive and indolent type of religion. It muses and 
thinks ; it kindles with the fervor of its own medi- 
tations ; it prays and adores, and mounts up as 
into heaven on the wings of contemplation ; — or, 
what is quite as likely, it walks sadly and trem- 
blingly ; it weeps in secret places ; it sees not the 
light of God's countenance ; it moans over its own 
sorrows ; it is distressed both with some dim feeling 
of its own deficiencies, and with the sight of wick- 
edness and sorrow ; it often repeats to itself, " O 
that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly 
away and be at rest ; " — but it forgets to ask, 
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " Disjoined 
as it is from human sympathies, failing to recog- 
nize the ties that connect each soul with kindred 



186 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

souls around, it does not feel the impulses which 
prompt our nature to activity and to the putting 
forth of influence upon others ; or, if it feels those 
impulses, it does not recognize them as proceeding 
from God, and essential to mental and spiritual 
health, but rather as something with which god- 
liness has no alliance. A religion thus imperfect 
and one-sided is deficient in respect to usefulness. 
Because it lacks brotherly kindness, it tends to the 
neglect of that great precept, " Let us do good to 
all men as we have opportunity, and especially to 
those of the household of faith." It is uncon- 
scious of having been kindled to shine as a light 
in the world. It is like a lamp lighted in a tomb 
and left to burn itself away. 

You see, then, that such a godliness is not in 
harmony with the divine constitution of our na- 
ture. Godliness, disjoined from the special sym- 
pathies and affections of human society, is not 
such a godliness as man was made for. Man 
was not made to think merely and to feel, but to 
work under the guidance of thought and the im- 
pulse of feeling. He was not made for solitude ; 
that judgment of his Creator, " It is not good for 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 187 

man to be alone," is written on every part of his 
complex nature. If we look at him in his rela- 
tion to God, he was made, not for worship 
merely, but for service. The powers with which 
he is endowed, — the natural bonds which con- 
nect him with his fellow-men, — the affections 
and sympathies which make those bonds a joy, 
and can not be suppressed without some violence 
done to nature, — all show that God has made 
man, and placed him in this world, not to worship 
only but to serve. That godliness, then, to 
which brotherly kindness in every brotherly re- 
lation has not been added as by a vital growth 
is not in harmony with the nature of man, as 
made for activity or as made for society. Thus 
it soon parts with common sense ; for common 
sense is simply practical sense, — that kind of 
sense which takes things as they are, and deals 
with them as they are, — that kind of sense 
which God has given to man, as a social, active, 
working creature, to tell him what to do and how 
to do it. And when godliness, or the sentiment 
of devotion, has parted with common sense, it 
debilitates the soul instead of giving it strength ; 



188 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

it misleads the judgment; it becomes itself a 
morbid thing ; it fails of honoring God. 

Here let me tell jou that the godliness which 
is separated from a healthy connection with hu- 
man sympathies and affections tends to all sorts 
of errors in religion. The whole history of re- 
ligion is full of instruction on this point. God- 
liness without brotherly kindness is essentially 
enthusiastic. It lives in the element of feelino-. 
It is imaginative and speculative. It has to do, 
not with the tangible and every-day realities of 
sober duty, but rather with the world in which 
it walks alone, musing, communing with itself, 
kindling itself into excitement for excitement's 
sake. Thus becoming itself unhealthy and erratic, 
it tends to all sorts of error. It is likely to mis- 
interpret and misapply the Word of God ; for the 
glory of the Bible is that it is so wonderfully 
a book of common sense and common life. The 
recluse, poring over it in his cell, separated from 
all human activities and duties, can not under- 
stand it aright. The Bible was given for the 
• support and guidance of man in society ; it was 
given that it might help us in the duties, cares, 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 189 

sorrows, perils, and conflicts of this actual human 
life ; and in the cell of a hermit, who has fled 
from the duties and the sympathies of manhood, 
it is as much out of place as a sun-dial in a 
dungeon. For the uses of that unpractical and 
self-secluding devotion, the Bible, in its common- 
sense interpretation, is altogether insufficient. 
And, therefore, that such devotion may find its 
aliment and ^stimulus, the Bible, studied under 
the guidance of a morbid imagination, is con- 
verted into a book of riddles and dreams. The 
devotion of the cell, — the devotion that flees 
from the homely sympathies and duties of soci- 
ety, — is the parent of mystical interpretation and 
of mystical theology. An exaggerated and un- 
practical sentiment of devotion sees every truth 
through a discoloring and distorting medium, and 
so builds up its own systems of faith, mystical or 
metaphysical, as far removed from any sound in- 
terpretation of the Scriptures as they are from 
the actual need of human nature in its appointed 
sphere of duty and of trial. 

It will not be difficult for you to see what 
advantages the devotional spirit derives from its 



190 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

legitimate association with the sympathies and 
affections that belong to man in society. In 
what way is devoutness, or that part of religion 
which is the direct intercourse of the soul with 
God, benefited by being joined with brotherly 
kindness or the social affections ? 

First, those social affections, ennobled and ele- 
vated by devotion, react to enliven, to guide, and 
to strengthen the sentiment or prin^ple of devo- 
tion. Godliness, to which brotherly kindness has 
been added, says, " Our Father w^io art in heav- 
en." It says, " Give us this day our daily bread." 
It prays, " Forgive us our debts as we forgive our 
debtors." It cries, " Lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil." Godliness without 
brotherly kindness is godliness in the singular 
number only. It prays, it confesses, it adores, 
only by itself and for itself. Such godliness sees 
nothing, and knows nothing, save itself and God ; 
and, therefore. It knows neither itself nor God 
aright. But godliness, in its legitimate union with 
the sympathies and affections that belong to man 
in his relations to liis fellow-men, strengthens it- 
self by all the natural strength of those affec- 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 191 

tions and sympatliies. The feeble voice of lonely 
devotion swells to a manlier tone when loving 
hearts are mingled in household worship, or when 
many gathered households in the Sabbath congre- 
gation, — friends and neighbors, compassed about 
with the same perils, struggling in the same con- 
flicts and labors, and sharing the same joys and 
sorrows, — fill the temple with their united songs 
and prayers. 

Thus godliness, in its legitimate union with the 
social affections, becomes an active principle, and 
rises to a just ascendancy over all the powers and 
habits of the soul. Instead of living in silent 
musings only, or in lonely communings with the 
infinite, it comes forth into the sphere of human 
duties and sympathies, to sanctify all that it 
touches. When that natural sentiment of wor- 
ship which exercises itself in the immediate ad- 
dresses of the soul to God is not only enlightened 
and directed by Christian faith, but strength- 
ened by being blended with the sentiment of 
brotherly kindness in the special relations of hu- 
man society, it becomes an active force in all the 
soul's activity. The man whose godliness is of 



192 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

such a sort carries, not merely the form nor 
merely the savor of godhness, but something 
of its power, into all his intercourse with men. 
Familiar w^th Christ, through whom he finds 
access to God, he communes with Christ, and 
attains to more and more of his spirit and 
likeness, by following him in daily acts of broth- 
erly kindness. He is the godly man in spirit and 
in truth, whose godliness is not a mere sentiment, 
uttering itself in prayer and song, or feeding itself 
in tranquil meditation, but a practical habit, blend- 
ing its influence with all household love and duty, 
and making home a blessed sanctuary, — the house 
of God, — the gate of heaven. He is in truth the 
godly man whose godliness, instead of being iso- 
lated and unsympathizing, goes forth spontaneous- 
ly to offer the right hand of brotherhood to fellow- 
worshipers and fellow-believers in Christ, loving 
to work with them, loving them because they love 
the Lord, and loving to comfort and to help them 
for Christ's sake. He is the godly man whose 
godliness mingles unaffectedly, yet powerfully, with 
all his friendships, — who can not but pray for his 
friends because he loves them, and can not but 



BROTHERLY KINDNESS. 193 

love them the more because he prays for them. 
He is the godly man whose godliness, instead of 
being a sabbath-day godliness only, or limiting 
itself to some particular aspect of this complex 
human life, hallows all his patriotic sympathies, 
and guides him with a steady force in all the 
duties of citizenship and public spirit. This is 
true godliness, when the acknowledgment of 
God, the religious or devotional sentiment which 
Christ has awakened and enlightened, the feel- 
ing of worship, — humbled and contrite, yet con- 
fiding ; awed, yet full of hope and love, — invests 
all the legitimate sympathies and duties of this life 
with the awfulness of their relation to eternity 
and to God, and lifts up this whole mortal life 
into the sphere of heavenly influences. 

Learn, then, to correct in your own mind — if 
you find it there — that unworthy prejudice wdiich 
represents religion as consisting exclusively in acts 
and exercises of devotion. That prejudice, so 
widely entertained, dishonors religion, — dishon- 
ors the soul of man, — dishonors God. Religion 
is not a separate and disconnected thing, arbitra- 
rily appended, as it were, to the character of the 

13 



194 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUKE 

man ; it is not some single act in which the effect 
of God's grace begins and is finished; it is not 
merely some distinct series of devout actions, 
running like a golden thread through the com- 
plicated tissue of the man's various activity ; it 
is not the effect of God's grace upon some single 
sentiment or faculty of our fallen nature ; — it is 
a new life breathed into the soul by the renewing 
spirit ; a new creation, in which old things pass 
away and all things become new ; a continued 
and all- transforming process, in which the whole 
body, soul, and spirit, — all faculties, all sensibil- 
ities, all affections and activities, — are sanctifiecl 
to the service and the praise of God. 



CHAPTER X. 



CHARITY. 



" Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand 
all mysteries and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, 
80 that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
and though I give my body to be burned, and have not char- 
ity, it profiteth me nothing. . . . And now abide th faith, hope, 
charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is chai-ity." 1 
Cor. xiii. 1-3, 13. 

" Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; and 
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He 
that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. ... No 
man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God 
dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. ... If a man 
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar : for he 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God whom he hath not seen 1" 1 John iv. 7, 8, 12, 20. 

" And above all these things, put on charity which is the 
bond of perfectness." Col. iii. 14. 

" Giving all diligence, add — to brotherly kindness, 
CHARITY." 2 Pet. i. 5, 7. 



CHAPTER X. 

CHARITY. 

The great commandment. Love, or holy benevolence, im- 
plied in every element of Christian character. Yet, in another 
view, it is the consummation of progress in the new life. 
Brotherly kindness, or instinctive special affection in social 
relations, needs to be elevated, expanded, and completed by 
the spirit of universal love. The self-disciphne which trains 
the soul to charity. 

Brotherly kindness is always beautiful. It 
not' only wins our sympathy, but commands re- 
spect and honor, especially when it is visibly 
associated with religious conscientiousness. Yet 
the precept, "Add to brotherly kindness charity," 
gives us to understand that in a completed Chris- 
tian character there is a higher principle of be- 
nevolence. Charity, as the word is used in the 
New Testament, is the same thing with that love 
which is required by the great commandment, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" It 
is love, not in the limited and inferior sense, 



198 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

not in the form of those special attachments 
which exist by the instinct of nature between 
human beings connected with each other by re- 
lations of special dependence and duty, but in 
the higher form of universal benevolence, — love 
to all, without limitation or partiality. This uni- 
versal benevolence, — which is to brotherly kind- 
ness or the special affections what virtue is to 
faith, what knowledge is to virtue, what tem- 
perance is to knowledge, namely, its complete- 
ness and its security against being perverted and 
corrupted, — is represented as the consummation 
and the crowning beauty of a truly Christian 
character. Thus the apostle Paul, having ex- 
horted his friends at Colosse to all the acts and 
manifestations of brotherly kindness, or of that 
special affection which they owed to each other 
as members of the same Christian fellowship, 
proceeds to urge upon them the higher and more 
comprehensive duty of universal love. Having 
entreated them to " put on " sympathy, kindness, 
humility, meekness, slowness to anger, and readi- 
ness to forgive, he adds, " And above all these 
things " — that is, upon them, like a girdle, — " put 



CHARITY. 199 

on charity which is the bond of perfectness." It 
is of this . love that the apostle John speaks when 
he sajs, " If we love one another," with a love 
like that with which God loved us and in which 
he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, 
" God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected 
in us." Thus it is that, in the passage which 
above all others illustrates so beautifully the 
meaning of this word charity, the apostle, while 
insisting on the unspeakable superiority of per- 
sonal holiness over all gifts, however wonderful, 
and showing how prophecies will cease, and 
tongues will fail, and knowledge will vanish 
away, says, " Charity never faileth ; " and again, 
"Now abideth faith, hope, charity, tli^se three;" 
— these are the permanent things, permanent as 
religion itself, permanent as the soul which they 
quicken and adorn, — "but the greatest of these 
is charity." 

Yet it is not to be supposed that because this 
love, or charity is the crowning grace of a com- 
pleted Christian character, therefore there are 
some forms and de2;rees of Christian character 
in which this element is wholly wanting. On 



200 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

the contrary, there is no true Christian profes- 
sion, no renovation to holiness, no effectual ex- 
perience of Christ's saving work, without love 
in this highest meaning of the word. Thus our 
Lord himself taught, on many occasions, that 
there is no true obedience to God where the 
heart does not obey that great command, " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Thus Paul 
says, " He that loveth another hath fulfilled the 
law ; " for every commandment in respect to your 
neighbor, every thing forbidden, and every thing 
required, is briefly comprehended in this saying, 
'' Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love 
worketh no ill to its neighbor; therefore love is 
the falfillirig of the law." And again, he says, 
" Though I speak with the tongues of men and 
of angels, and have not charity, I am become as 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though 
I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have 
all faith so that I could remove mountains, and 
have not charity, I am nothing. And though 
I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
though I give my body to be burned, and have 



CHAEITY. 201 

not charity, ft profiteth me nothing." All works 
and sacrifices of zeal, even in the service of relig- 
ion, are worthless, if they are not inspired by love. 
In another way, but with the same purport, the 
apostle John says, " Every one that loveth is born 
of God ; he that loveth not knoweth not God, 
for God is love." " If a man say, I love God, 
and hateth his brother," — not his brother Chris- 
tian merely, but his brother man, — " he is a liar ; 
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen ? " We may set it down, then, as a first 
principle, that there is no truly Christian character 
in which lov^e, charity, universal benevolence, is 
not an element. Wherever there is faith, a true 
and active faith, it is faith that works by love. 
Wherever there is virtue springing from faith, it 
is conscience owning the obligation of the law of 
love. Wherever there is knowledge or moral dis- 
crimination, it is a mind enlightened and trained 
to see spontaneously what the law of love re- 
quires. Wherever there is a Christian self-con- 
trol, it is a mind struggling against its own in- 
firmities and passions, that it may be what God 



202 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

would have it be, and may thus fulfill his benev- 
olent designs. Wherever there is the principle of 
Christian steadfastness, it is the perseverance of 
a mind in which selfish impulses and habits are 
progressively subdued by the new spirit within, — 
the indAvelling spirit of God's love. Wherever 
there is a true communion with God in worship, 
it is a mind that beholds and adores the glory 
of God as the loving Creator and Ruler of the 
universe. And wherever there is a Christian 
brotherly kindness, it is that special affection 
toward members of the household of faith, or 
toward others in relations of special sympathy 
and duty, which is felt and cherished by a mind 
that pays its willing homage to the law of uni- 
versal love. Without a mind obedient to the 
law which says, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself," there can be neither repentance to- 
ward God nor faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. 
It will not be safe for you to forget that such 
charity is essential to the beginning of a Chris- 
tian life, and equally essential to every stage of 
Christian jirogress. 

Yet it is not the less to be remembered that 



CHARITY. 203 

charity, considered as the completeness of Christian 
character, " the bond of perfectness," must be the 
result of growth in grace. As related to other 
elements of Christian life and progress, it is the 
consummation of them all. In one who has just 
been converted from entire worldliness and unbe- 
lief, the new mind may naturally make itself known 
chiefly in the simplicity with which it relies on the 
reality of things not seen, and lays hold on the 
offers and hopes of the gospel. It may be ex- 
hibited in a new tenderness of conscience, and a 
manly purpose to do right, — adding to faith 
virtue. As it advances, it will naturally become 
more familiar with the principles of the new life, 
will see with a more prompt and accurate judg- 
ment what is right, and will act in the spirit of a 
larger freedom, — adding to virtue knowledge. 
Still advancing, it becomes acquainted with the 
need of a vigilant self-control, and manifests itself 
in the endeavor to subdue every wayward impulse, 
and to live and walk in the pure light of truth, — and 
so it adds to knowledge temperance. As the same 
new mind goes on from strength to strength, the 
disciple who was at first dependent upon frames 



204 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

and feelings becomes steadfast, a firm and perse- 
vering Christian, strong in the stabiHty of prin- 
ciple, — having added to temperance patience. 
Then, you may see him in another stage of his 
spiritual growth ; he walks with God, day by day, 
in calm and heavenly intercourse ; he dwells as in 
the secret place of the Most High, — for to pa- 
tience he has added godliness. Observing still the 
progress of his character, you see that his devout- 
ness, instead of making him unsocial and austere, 
quickens his natural sympathies with those around 
him, and especially with his fellow-disciples, and 
the grace of God w^ithin him shows itself in the 
sympathies and duties which connect him with 
brethren and friends, with home and country, with 
the church and with the civil commonwealth, — for 
he adds to godliness brotherly kindness. Nor is 
this all. In that brotherly kindness there is some- 
thing more than the mere play of natural sympa- 
thies. Inasmuch as it is Christian, the brotherly 
kindness of a soul that walks with God, there is 
in it continually something of the spirit of God's 
love ; and thus brotherly kindness, in the various 
forms of special sympathy and affection, grows 



CHARITY. 205 

into charity. The circles of that love, obedient 
to the elastic force that shapes them, spread and 
widen till they include the world. The disciple 
whose conversion was first seen in the simple faith 
with which he laid hold on God's word of grace 
and hope, and in the humble, scrupulous, yet reso- 
lute conscientiousness with which he set himself to 
the performance of all duty, stands up at last in 
the manifest likeness of his Father in heaven, who 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 

I have represented all this as if it were a natu- 
ral growth, and in one sense it is entirely natural. 
Yet you must not forget that there is another view. 
In all the progress of the new and spiritual nature 
there is need of diligence. This charity, which 
so beautifully completes and crowns the combina- 
tion of Christian graces, can not be attained with- 
out diligent self-culture. All spiritual growth is 
simply the progress which the soul makes when, 
forgetting the things which are behind, and reach- 
ing forth to those things which are before, it 
presses toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Jesus Christ. Charity grows 



206 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

out of brotherly kindness only in that soul which, 
moved by the Holy Spirit and living in fellowship 
with Christ, is humbly and earnestly endeavoring 
to become continually more like God. In other 
minds, the instinctive sentiment which connects 
them with the family, with kindred and friends, 
with countrymen, and with associates in the same 
religious body, is often seen to be the antagonist 
of charity. 

Think, then, what these instinctive affections 
are when separated from the spirit of universal 
love. In other words, what becomes of brotherly 
kindness, in whatever form, when charity is not 
added to it? For example; what is patriotism 
without charity ? The love of one's own native 
land, and of one's own countrymen as distin- 
guished from the men of other lands, is a natural 
affection, and there is something generous in it, as 
there is in every human sympathy. But is it of 
course, and always, a benevolent affection ? Does 
it of course expand into benevolence ? On the 
contrary, is there not in every land a vulgar and 
heathenish patriotism, essentially malignant in its 
tendency ? In the language of such patriotism, 



CHARITY. 207 

as in the language of ancient Rome, a foreigner is 
the same thing with an enemy ; or, as in the lan- 
guage of ancient Greece, a foreigner is the same 
thing with a barbarian. Such patriotism breathes 
hatred and contempt toward all mankind. How 
plain is it that the instinctive human sentiment of 
affection toward one's own country and country- 
men, instead of being essentially benevolent, is 
often — nay, when detached from Christian prin- 
ciple, is naturally — nothing else than an ex- 
tended and exaggerated selfishness, the more odious 
for the grandeur of the scale on which it operates. 
So of a man's instinctive affection for his family ; — 
how often do you see that affection, instead of 
wakening the man to higher and better sentiments, 
and making him feel (as his Creator designed it 
should make him feel) his position in the universal 
family of God, actually tending the other way, 
and making him more and more selfish toward all 
to whom he is not bound by this instinctive pas- 
sion. Just so the sentiment of special affection 
which naturally springs up among those who hold 
the same religious doctrines, and cherish the same 
traditions, — which makes them feel that they have 



208 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

common interests, and which brings them together 
in a special communion both of worship and of 
enterprise and effort, — needs to be watched lest it 
become uncharitable, narrow, bigoted, the antago- 
nist more than the support of that higher senti- 
ment which is kindred to the universal love of God 
and the infinite pity of Christ. The very sym- 
pathy of brother with brother in the same church, 
unless each, giving all diligence, adds to brotherly 
kindness charity, may degenerate into a sectarian 
narrowness of feeling. Who will tell us that it 
does not often so degenerate till it becomes, in 
God's sight, hardly better or holier than the sym- 
pathy which connects the members of a political 
faction or of a masonic fraternity ? Brotherly 
kindness, thus degenerate and corrupt by un- 
hallowed separation from the principle of uni- 
versal love, becomes a most unchristian clannish- 
ness. 

But, on the other hand, where the believer, 
walking humbly with God, and loving his breth- 
ren of the household of faith, gives diligence that 
he may add to brotherly kindness charity, there 
brotherly kindness, in all its sympathies and im- 



CHARITY. 209 

pulses, is hallowed and exalted by that higher prin- 
ciple of universal love to which it ministers. In 
the churchy the kindly sympathy of brother with 
brother being thus ennobled is a sympathy by 
which they incite each other to aspirations and 
works of Christ-like love. The affection which binds 
such an one to his own family^ being sanctified by 
its alliance with the higher principle of universal 
love, is an affection which makes him more ready 
to feel for the welfare of all ; — as when a woman 
was once asked, " Is that your son for whom you 
are so interested in his danger ? " — and she made 
answer, " No, but he is somebody's son." Such a 
man's love of country swells by a natural expansion 
into universal philanthropy ; — not that he loves 
his country less, or is less ready to labor and to 
suffer for its welfare ; but the circles of his benev- 
olence still expand beyond the habitations of his 
kindred, beyond the limits of his native land, 
beyond the mountains and the seas, in fellowship 
with the all-embracing love of God. 

By what kind of diligence, then, and in what 
methods, may you make this grace of charity the 
completeness of your Christian character ? 

14 



210 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

1. Cultivate the spirit of universal love by a 
devout and intellio;ent communion with God. The 
Creator of the universe, who has filled it with life 
and with riches, and whose presence and character 
are everywhere manifested to the eye of faith, is 
the God of universal love. The controlling and up- 
holding power of the universe, watching everywhere 
over the welfare of his creatures, and overruling all 
events into subserviency to his designs, is the God 
of universal love. The holy Lawgiver and Judge 
of the universe, who has hedged up the way of 
sin with dreadful penalties, and who makes him- 
self known in all worlds as the protector of inno- 
cence and goodness, and the adversary of wrong, 
is the God of universal love. The gi'cat author 
of forgiveness and salvation for sinners, he who so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son 
that whosoever bclieveth on him may not perish, 
but may have everlasting life, he who is not will- 
ing that any should perish, but that all should 
come to repentance, is the God of universal love. 
Acquaint yourself, then, with God. Have com- 
munion witli him in all those acts of homage and 
devotion which he has appointed as the modes of 



CHARITY. 211 

intercourse between earth and heaven. Behold 
him In all the relations in which he manifests him- 
self to the adoring and obedient mind. Behold 
his glory as it shines in the person of the world's 
Redeemer, that so you may be changed into his 
image. Bring down upon your soul by prayer the 
Holy Spirit which he gives to them that ask him, 
that so you may be elevated to fellowship with him 
in his thoughts and affections. So surely as God is 
love, — eternal, universal, infinite love, — so surely 
the soul that lives in a devout and loving inter- 
course with him will be adorned with the beauty 
of resemblance to him, and will become a par- 
taker of the Divine nature ; for God is love, 
and he that dwelleth in God dwelleth in love. 

2. But in order that you may have such inter- 
course with God, you must also discipline your 
soul to charity by diligent well-doing in a life of 
usefulness. Observe what is necessary to such a 
hfe. 

Your employment in the world, whatever it may 
be, should be such as is in itself useful to mankind. 
No matter how humble, or how ill-rewarded in 
this world, is the daily labor by which you live ; 



212 CHRISTIAIT SELF-CULTURE. 

if it is only usefiil, it may serve to discipline youi 
soul in love. It is not enough that your employ- 
ment is a lucrative one, and that with the gain 
which it brings you may hope to accumulate the 
means of usefulness. You will never grow into 
the likeness of God's charity in this way. Your 
employment must be itself a daily contribution of 
your labor to the great aggregate of human happi- 
ness. Never permit yourself to be drawn, by any 
consideration, into an employment or enterprise in 
which you can not have the consciousness that 
you are doing good. And if you find that the 
occupation into which you have entered unthink- 
ingly is of such a nature that it has no tendency 
to promote the welfare of your fellow-men, — still 
more, if you find that the more you labor in it the 
more are you doing to make men. wicked and 
wretched, — you must abandon it and betake your- 
self to some useful employment. Do you think 
that the man whose daily activity in business goes 
to swell the dreadful aggregate of human guilt 
and sorrow can be at the same time adding to 
brotherly kindness charity ? No ; if you would 
put on charity as the bond of perfectness, your 



CHARITY. 213 

employment must be such that in pursuing it day 
by day you may be conscious of doing good as the 
servant of Him who is love. Pursue your busi- 
ness in this spirit, and all your daily labor, like the 
service of a ministering angel, is exalted into relig- 
ion. Such labor, in whatever station, though it 
be no higher than the labor of a rag-picker in the 
streets, or of the barefooted child that sweeps a 
crossing, may become a blessed ordinance by which 
the soul is disciplined to charity. 

This, however, is not the only diligence which 
is necessary to a life of usefulness. Your daily 
employment, be it ever so useful in itself, is not a 
sufficient discipline for the training of your soul 
into conscious fellowship with God's love. There- 
fore God surrounds you with means and opportu- 
nities of special usefulness additional to the gen- 
eral usefulness of your lawful industry. You have 
many opportimities of doing good, not only inci- 
dentally and in the general result of that employ- 
ment by which you live, but directly and for the 
sake of the good to be done. In such opportunities 
only is there the consciousness of doing good by 
self-denial. You must use such opportunities in 



214 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

the spirit of self-denial, if you would discipline your 
soul to charity. Remember that word, — " To do 
good, and to communicate, forget not." Do good, 
as you have opportunity, to all men. Do good 
not to your own family and kindred only, — not 
only to those of your own church or sect, — not 
only to those of your own " order " or fraternity, 
— not only to those of your opinion or party, — 
not only to those of your own country; — but to 
all men, everywhere, as you have opportunity. 
And how many opportunities have you of doing 
good to men of every sort, and of every land and 
lineage ? Seize those opportunities ; and so learn 
to open your heart, and to enlarge the sphere and 
reach of your affections. Thus learning freely, 
under God's kind discipline, and by communion 
with his Spirit, you may become a partaker of the 
Divine nature. 



CHAPTEK XI. 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 



" Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch can not beat 
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine : no more can ye, 
except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches." 
John XV. 4, 5. 

" Wherefore lay apart all fiithiness, and superfluity of 
naughtiness, and receive with meekness the ingrafted word, 
which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the 
word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 
James i. 21, 22. 

" Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hy- 
pocrisies, and envies, and aU evil -speakings, as new-born 
babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow 
thereby." 1 Pet. ii. 1, 2. 



CHAPTER XL 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 



A caution. Christian character not a mechanical structure, 
but a Uving growth. Mysteriousness of life. Growth of a 
human mind from infancy. Growth in grace, beginning with 
the new birth. Dependence of growth on food, " Sincere milk 
of the word." Relation of Christian growth to Christian self- 
discipline. Conditions without which there can be no spirit- 
ual growth. 

I HAVE been describing a religious life as a life 
of self-discipline. I have been showing you that 
the gospel, rousing you to a consciousness of your 
capabilities and of your need, calls you to make 
the most of yourself for time and for eternity ; 
and that it comes to your aid with infinite offers 
and promises. Viewing the Christian life in this 
particular aspect, I have been describing to you 
the separate features of a truly religious character, 
and have been showing you how one Christian 
habit or quality must be added to another. Per- 
haps I have not sufficiently guarded you against 



218 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUEE. 

the impression that there is or may be some series 
of exercises by which any man, if he will only 
put himself through the course, may attain to any 
degree of religious proficiency, — some drill like 
that by which the raw recruit is trained into famil- 
iarity with the details of soldiership. Perhaps I 
have not sufficiently warned you not to press too 
far the analogy between that progressive renova- 
tion of your soul in conformity with a divine 
model, and the process of building a house, or 
constructing a machine, or of hewing and chisel- 
ing a statue. Therefore would I now distinctly 
remind you that, from first to last, the formation 
of a tndy Christian character is not so much a 
construction as it is a living growth. The Scrip- 
tures recognize, indeed, the analogy between the 
progress of religious improvement and the con- 
struction of a building ; they call on believers to 
build up themselves on their most holy faith, as 
well as to edify one another ; but, on the other 
hand, they also use, and with much greater force 
and variety of expression, the analogies which 
they find between the spiritual life, from its be- 
o-innino: onward, and the vital processes of nature. 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 219 

With them, the beginning of Christian character 
is a birth, an ingrafting, the sprouting of a seed ; 
and its progress toward perfection is the growth, 
now of a plant from the germ to the blade and 
the ear and the full corn in the ear, — now of a 
branch drawing its sap from the stock and bour- 
geoning into fruitfulness, — now of a human soul 
and body from infancy to maturity. Yet it should 
be observed, that, when the Scriptures use the 
idea of growth to represent the progressive reno- 
vation of the Christian believer, the nature of that 
growth, as moral and spiritual, and not physical, 
as the result of thoughtful and diligent self-culture, 
and not of mere spontaneity, is never forgotten. 
" As the branch can not bear fruit of i'tself," saith 
Christ, " except it abide in the vine : no more 
can ye, except ye abide in me." " Grow in grace, 
and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ." "As new-born babes, desire 
the sincere milk of the w^ord, that ye may grow 
thereby." 

Christian growth, then, by the mysterious 
forces of the spiritual life, is what Christian self- 
culture aims at. If you enter upon that self-dis- 



220 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

cipline to which Christ invites you, and in which 
you may expect that God, according to his prom- 
ises, will work in you, of his good pleasure to 
will and to do, all your proficiency will be a 
growth in grace. Doubtless your own thoughtful 
diligence will be, fi'om first to last, an essential 
condition of that proficiency ; yet, in all your 
proficiency, you will be conscious of dependence 
on higher forces than any force of your own will. 
You are to grow as the plant grows under the 
gardener's hand. He waters it, he watches it, he 
trains and prunes it ; but in all its growth there is 
a power at work which is not his, and which 
giveth the increase. Think, then, on the mys- 
teiiousness of a living growth ; for with all your 
diligence to put on Christ, and to train yourself 
into conformity with him, the same mystery will 
be inseparable from your growth in grace. 

You look upon a new-born babe, — how helpless 
a creature is it, and how frail ! But that weak, 
helpless thing is born for progress. Guarded and 
fed by a care of which it is at first unconscious, 
it not only lives, but grows. The food j)rovided 
for it by the all-providing hand of its Creator, and 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 221 

received into its healthy system, is mysteriously 
transmuted into the blood, the muscle, the nerves, 
the bones, the entire strength and beauty of the 
body it nourishes. Thus, in due time, the babe, 
by slow degrees, quite imperceptible from day to 
day, grows to the stature and the strength of 
manhood. 

Analogous to this is the growth of the mind. 
In that new-born babe, the mind, with all its 
capacities undeveloped, and with fewer instincts 
in operation than belong to the chicken breaking 
from the shell, is nothing more than the germ or 
the folded bud of an intellectual being. What* is 
there of thought, of desire, of volition, in that 
mind just entering upon this mortal life? How 
entire a blank is its consciousness ! But from the 
moment in which the eye first opens to the light, 
from the moment in which the ear receives the 
first impulse of sound, fr'om the moment in which 
the sense of touch first encounters resistance, 
from the moment in which the instinct of hunger 
or of pain first makes itself felt in that germ of 
human life, the mind begins to know, to think, to 
feel. In other words, it begins to receive into it- 



222 CiiRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

self, and to incorporate into its own being, — in- 
adequately, no doubt, and, as it were, in merely- 
infinitesimal portions, — truth, the perceived re- 
ality of things. Thus the mind grows: — its vari- 
ous and marvelous capacities, which at first were 
folded up, as the leaves, the flower, and the fruit 
are folded np together in the bud, are expanded 
and brought out, as the leaves and blossom and 
then the fruit come forth to light and air from 
the opening bud. It is by such a growth that the 
mind advances. The intellectual being grows 
not, indeed, by the same process or the same 
means with the material organization which it in- 
habits, but by means and by a process suited to 
its nature. It grows by acquiring knowledge, by 
being warmed and expanded with emotion, by 
putting itself forth in choice and action. It grows 
by taking into itself and digesting, and so incorpo- 
rating wuth its own existence, that manifested and 
perceived reality of things which we call truth. 
Truth is that after which the mind instinctively 
hungers, and by which it grows. 

When once the mind has beo^un to receive truth 
into itself, and its powers have thus begun to be 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 223 

unfolded, it is thenceforth for ever another thing 
from what it was before. With the first access 
of knowledge to its faculty of knowing, — with 
the first movement of its powers, spontaneously 
unfolding to meet and to receive the access of 
knowledge, — begins its experience as an intel- 
lectual being ; and that first experience is the be- 
ginning of its growth. Thenceforth that experi- 
ence is never lost. Consciousness may not ana- 
lyze it ; memory may not retain it ; no image of 
it may be reproduced ; yet it is not lost. All 
that mind's after-history proceeds from this point. 
Whatever that mind knows, feels, does, or is, for 
ever afterwards, is blended with this first experi- 
ence. So every subsequent experience from mo- 
ment to moment, from year to year, — every per- 
ception, thought, feeling, or action, — is a part of 
the mind's growth, whether for good or evil. It 
may be soon forgotten, and never recalled, but it 
is not lost ; as a part of the mind's experience, it 
is incorporated with the mind itself. 

The body which we here inhabit, constructed 
as it is for temporary use, comes to the limit of 
its growth and strength, and then begins to decay. 



224 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

But the mind is of another nature. Created for 
immortality, it is created for unlimited progress. 
Its growth may be retarded or quickened, may be 
perverted or rightly directed ; yet it grows, and 
there is no reason why it may not, in some sense, 
grow for ever. Its progress may be clogged by 
the infirmities of the body, or may be arrested 
and apparently suppressed by its decay ; but prog- 
ress is the first law of the mind's existence. So 
long as the immortal spirit continues to think, to 
feel, to act, it continues to grow in some sort ; 
each act, each emotion, each thought, throughout 
its immortality, is, as it were, some little line or 
particle added to the previous amount of its exist- 
ence. 

The quality of the mind's growth depends on 
the quality of the nutriment by which it grows. 
Truth, simple and pure, — the reality of things, 
fairly and rightly apprehended, — is the soul's fit 
aliment ; and when the soul is thus fed, its growth 
is sound. But when the truth is mixed with false 
apprehensions of things, or when from whatever 
cause it is not fairly and simply received into the 
mind as truth, the growth becomes diseased, de- 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 225 

formed, monstrous, or dwarfish. When the mind, 
instead of desiring the truth and accepting it, re- 
jects it and yields itself to folly, its growth, instead 
of being a joyful progress from one degree of wis- 
dom and manliness to another, is a growth in folly 
and madness. He that " feedeth on wind, and 
followeth after the east wind," " daily increaseth 
lies and desolation." He that " feedeth on ashes " 
is he whom " a deceived heart hath turned aside." 
Such is the growth of the mind in general. I 
have described it to you for the sake of illustrating 
that Christian growth to which I would have you 
aspire. That growth in grace and in ihe knowl- 
edge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the 
progress and development of spiritual life. It is 
the growth of the regenerate soul in likeness to 
God and in fellowship with him. I say, the re- 
generate soul, because progress presupposes a be- 
ginning, growth presupposes a birth ; and because 
the beginning of this spiritual life is not by mere 
nature, but by grace, — not by being born of the 
flesh, but by being born of the Spirit. The soul, 
awaking from the torpor of its native ungodliness, 
led to repentance, led to Christ, trusting in him, 

15 



226 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

and sitting at his feet to learn of him, becomes a 
new creature ; and thus there begins in that soul 
a new life, — a life which has its being and its 
blessedness in a willing subjection to God. In 
that life the soul is conscious of its relation to 
God through Christ, and conscious of living for 
eternity. The soul thus born again is born to 
progress. That soul's continual experience, tast- 
ing that the Lord is gracious, is a continual 
growth in grace, — a growth in which the nature 
of the soul, as created for conscious and willing 
subjection to God, becomes more and more un- 
folded, — a growth in which the soul is habitually- 
approaching toward a perfect conformity to God's 
moral imaxre. 

The food that nourishes the soul for spiritual 
growth is the word of God, or, in the phrase of 
an apostle, '' the sincere [or unadulterated] milk 
of the word." It is truth, — such truth as is 
suited to sustain the soul in a life of fellowship 
with God. It is that truth which God has re- 
vealed concerning himself, — all the gospel of his 
grace, and especially the true and faithful saying 
in which all is comprehended, " Christ Jesus came 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 227 

into the world to save sinners." It is the truth 
in its simplicity, " the sincere milk of the word," 
— the word, not as conveyed by moldy and 
corrupting traditions, — not as coagulated by met- 
aphysical discussion, and pressed into scientific 
propositions dry and hard, — not as imbittered 
and perhaps made poisonous by controversial 
and sectarian passions, — not as diluted by the 
tricks of fancy and the deceitfulness of a heart 
unwilling to encounter and recognize the plain 
reality of things, — but simply " the word which 
by the gospel is preached to you." In the gos- 
pel, no truth is set forth merely as an abstract 
proposition to be received into the understanding 
and to lie unproductive in the memory; but, on 
the contrary, every truth is given out as an ap- 
peal to conscience, or to some aflPection of the 
soul ; every truth stands as a motive to repen- 
tance, to submission, to holy confidence in God, 
to adoration, to obedience, to love. Thus in the 
gospel every truth is vital, giving and sustaining 
life in the believing soul. He who has once " tasted 
that the Lord is gracious " must needs hunger and 
thirst after righteousness ; nor can he find any 



228 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

tliiiw else than the sincere milk of the word to 
satisfy that craving. " How sweet are thy words 
unto my taste ! " The soul, feeding upon immortal 
truth, becoming more and more familiar with 
what God has made known concerning himself 
and his eternal counsels of love, — drawing nearer 
and nearer to the glory of God in Christ, — ani- 
mated and inspired more and more with thoughts 
of eternity and heaven, of the cross, the conflict, 
and the victory, — apprehending and taking in 
more completely the exceeding great and precious 
promises, — becomes more holy and heavenly, 
bears more of God's likeness, partakes more 
gloriously of his nature, grows daily toward the 
perfect stature and the Christ-like beauty of its 
approaching immortality. 

But what connection is there between this spir- 
itual growth and that Christian self-discipline to 
which you are invited ? Perhaps you are ready 
to ask whether a vital growth is not necessarily 
spontaneous and unconscious, and whether this 
idea of Christian progress is not simply irrecon- 
cilable with the idea of progress by self-discipline. 
I have already touched upon this thought ; but 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 229 

let US now return to it, and see how spiritual 
growth, in all its spontaneousness and uncon- 
sciousness, may be the result of conscious and 
resolute endeavor. The idea of growth is not 
incongruous with the idea of culture ; and self- 
culture is self-discipline. 

What is the representation of the Scriptures 
concerning Christian progress, considered as a 
vital growth ? They clearly teach us that cer- 
tain conditions are necessary to this spiritual 
growth, and those conditions are such as can not 
take place unconsciously or involuntarily. " Where- 
fore, laying aside all malice [or wickedness], and 
all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil- 
speakings, as new-born babes [that is, with all sim- 
plicity], desire the sincere milk of the word, that 
ye may grow thereby." That the word may 
have its effect, the mind must be in a state to 
receive it and relish it, and thus to be nourished 
by it. 

Another apostle uses another comparison to 
illustrate the same idea. " Wherefore lay apart 
all filthiness, and superfluity of naughtiness, and 
receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which 



230 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

is able to save your soiils." When the vine- 
dresser would insert into a worthless stock a graft 
of fruitful and generous nature, he begins by 
pruning off the superfluous growth of the old 
stock ; he removes those worthless shoots and 
branches, that the graft, drawing to itself the sap 
and life of the stock, may have the opportunity 
to bring forth fruit according to its nature from 
the root which yielded no good fruit before. So 
if the word of God is to be grafted effectually 
into your soul, and if the ingrafted word is to 
live within you and bear fruit according to its 
nature, the process must begin with the pruning- 
off of the superfluous wild growth. In other 
language, dropping the figure, you must renounce 
and resist the wayward affections that reign with- 
in you by nature; you must deny yourself; you 
must overcome those habits of affection, of action, 
and of thought, which are contrary to truth and 
holiness ; and thus you must receive the word 
*' with meekness," — that is, with a mind so sim- 
ple so calm, so humble, that wayward passions 
and wild affections shall not choke the word, and 
cause it to become unfruitful. 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 231 

Returning, now, to the figure which the apostle 
Peter uses, we find it setting forth the same idea 
of the conditions without whicli there is no spir- 
itual growth. If you would relish the pure milk 
of the word, and grow thereby, as the new-born 
babe lives and grows by its appropriate food, you 
must become like that new-born babe ; you must 
lay " aside all malice, and all guile, and hypoc- 
risies, and envies, and all evil-speakings ; " you 
must suppress all selfish habits and impulses, all 
deceit and affectation, all that disposition which 
hungers and thirsts after the seeming and advan- 
tages of righteousness rather than after righteous- 
ness itself, all that spirit of self-exaltation which 
moves you to envy and makes another's welfare 
or progress less desirable to you than your own, 
and especially all those evil and unloving words 
in which the spirit of selfishness seeks to express 
itself. The necessary condition of the soul's 
growth in holiness, — the condition without which 
the Word of God can not be effectual to spiritual 
growth, — is that the soul shall diligently resist 
all those propensities which are contrary to the 
Word, and to that life which the Word nourishes. 



232 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

The order of nature and of grace is, — the order 
of all experience is, — " cease to do evil ; learn to 
do well." You can not learn to do well, unless 
you begin by ceasing to do evil. 

You see, then, how it is that men may hear 
the word of God and read it, may find their 
thoughts and feelings deeply interested in it, 
may even make it the subject-matter of their 
studies and of the profoundest speculative in- 
quiry, and may yet remain without God in 
the world. It is not that there is no efficacy in 
the word. It is not that the word is not suited 
to their nature and capacities. It is that they 
will not truly and frankly cease to do evil, in 
order that they may learn to do well. It is that 
they will not repent, in order to obey. It is that 
they will not prune off the irregular, worthless, 
thorny growth of selfishness and ungodliness, in 
order to receive with meekness the ingrafted word. 
It is that they will not lay aside all malice, and 
all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil- 
speakings, in order to receive the word and to be 
nourished by it into holiness. They will not re- 
ceive the kingdom of God as a little child may 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 233 

receive it. They will not turn and become as 
little children. A little child in its simplicity 
may receive the kingdom of God. The renewing 
efficacy of the gospel may enter into the mind 
with the earliest rudiments of intellectual and 
moral instruction. In that little child, bending 
at its mother's knee to pray, and hearing from 
its mother's lips " that sweet story of old," how 
Jesus took little children into his arms and blessed 
them, a new and spiritual life may begin, — an 
infant life at first, but growing with the child's 
growth, and sttengthening with its strength. The 
mind, the heart, the entire soul of that child may 
be molded in all the process of growth, from in- 
fancy onward, by the power of truth quickening 
the sense of duty and the consciousness of rela- 
tions to eternity, and by the power of God's love 
made manifest in Christ, — while the man of high 
and various intelligence, speculating profoundly 
and inquiring accurately, reads and hears the 
Word of life, and even studies it attentively, 
without once tasting that the Lord is gracious. 
The spiritual life begins even in a little child 
that is simply and humbly obedient to the truth ; 



234 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

but it can have no beginning in the maturest and 
most enliglitened mind that will not resolutely 
deny ungodliness, turning with earnest purpose 
to obey and follow Christ. 

In the same way you see how it is that in many 
regenerate souls (as in a charitable judgment we 
may presume them to be) there is so little evi- 
dence of spiritual growth. It is not because the 
word can not nourish them. It is not because the 
promises of God are of no validity. It is because 
they are not diligent to overcome and suppress 
that \vhich remains within them of ungodly habits 
and affections. They have no adequate sense or 
resolution of what is necessary on their part in 
order that the word with which they are fed may 
have its effect in causing them to grow into more 
of the likeness of God, and more of the beauty 
and strength of spiritual life. In other words, 
they disregard the great principle which under- 
lies those -warnings, "Quench not the Spirit," 
"Grieve not the Spirit," "that Holy Spirit of 
promise." Growth in grace, while it is in one 
sense spontaneous and even unconscious, is in 
another sense the effect of self-culture and self 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 235 

discipline. While it is in one aspect the work of 
the informing Word and quickening Spirit of God, 
it is also, in another aspect, the achievement of 
the soul itself struggling in God's strength, and 
under his guidance, against its own corruptions. 
Thus have I shown you what is necessary on 
your part to your spiritual growth. You must be 
willing to know and to condemn your own defi- 
ciencies. You must diligently endeavor to under- 
stand your errors, and to escape from them. As 
under the eye of God, and with prayer for his 
illumination, you must search out your, secret 
faults, confessing them to him, and forsaking 
them. You must " purify your soul in obey- 
ing the truth through the Spirit." So shall you 
" grow in grace and in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Your soul shall 
be nourished with angels' food, the Word of God, 
and shall grow toward " the measure of the stat- 
ure of the fullness of Christ." 



CHAPTER Xn. 



FRUITFULNESS 



" I am the vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth in 
me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit : for 
without me ye can do nothing." John xv. 5. 

"Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; 
so shall ye be my disciples." John xv. 8. 

" Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue ; and to 
virtue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and to tem- 
perance, patience ; and to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, 
brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For 
if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye 
shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Pet. i. 5, 8. 



CHAPTER XII. 



FRUITFULNESS. 



Self-culture resulting in fruitfulness. You must not con- 
found fruitfulness with usefulness, nor with zeal for doing 
good. Scriptural idea of Christian fruitfulness illustrated in 
Christ's parable of the sower, — in his allegory of the vine, — 
in the apostle Peter's synthesis of Christian character. Prac- 
tical errors in Christian self-culture that may come from a 
mistaken conception of fruitfulness. 

No man should think of being Christ's disciple, 
unless it be his aim and aspiration to become one 
of those disciples in whom the word of Christ 
brings forth fruit to eternal life. Christian fruit- 
fulness is the end for which all the means of grace 
are appointed, and for which grace itself is given. 
It is the end, therefore, of all Christian self-dis- 
cipline. 

What is the true idea of Christian fruitfulness ? 
A mistaken conception of it can not but mislead 
your endeavors and your aspirations. For exam- 



240 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

pie, if you assume that fruitfulness in the knowledge 
of our Lord Jesus Christ is identical with visible 
or traceable usefulness in the Church, you will be 
likely to err, not only in your judgment of your- 
self and of others, but also in your thoughts and 
hopes of Christian progress. Special usefulness is 
in a great measure dependent on special gifts and 
special opportunities. Nay, as the apostle Paul 
suggests, a man may be greatly useful, though in 
his own soul the gospel brings forth no fruit to 
perfection ; he may preach to others with as wide 
a success as that which attended the apostle to 
the Gentiles, and yet be himself a castaway. In 
like manner, if you identify the idea of fruitful- 
ness with the one idea of zeal in some particular 
department of religious or philanthropic activity, 
or even with the one idea of zeal for doing good 
in general, as if that were the sum total of the 
Christian life, your judgment of yourself and of 
others will be narrow and often erroneous, and 
your aspirations after higher attainments in per- 
sonal holiness will be often misdirected. 

Observe, then, carefully, what idea of Chris- 
tian fruitfulness is given in the Scriptures. Begin 



FRUITFULNESS. 241 

with the parable of the sower, in which the great 
Teacher seems to have used this figure for the first 
time. His instances and illustrations of unfruit- 
fulness are significant. First, " When any one 
heareth the word of the kingdom, and under- 
standeth it not," — that is, does not receive it 
into his mind, — " then cometh the wicked one, 
and catcheth away that which was sown in his 
heart. This is he which received seed by the way- 
side." The word of the kingdom has no effect 
upon him. Next, " He that received the seed into 
stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, 
and anon with joy receiveth it ; yet hath he not 
root in himself, but dureth for a while." The 
word in his case is what the seed was that fell 
upon stony places, springing up suddenly, but 
withering in the first heat, and so producing noth- 
ing. Another instance of unfruitfulness is, "he 
that heareth the word, and the care of this world, 
and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, 
and he becometh unfruitful." The opposite of all 
this is fruitfulness, — the fruitfulness of him who 
" heareth the word and understandeth it," or takes 
it into his mind and digests it into thought and 
16 



242 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

life, — the fruitfulness of them who " in an hon- 
est and good heart, having heard the word, keep 
it, and bring forth fruit with patience." Fruitful- 
ness, according to the illustrations given in the 
parable of the sower, is nothing less than the en- 
tire effect of the gospel on the believing and obe- 
dient soul. 

On another occasion, Christ employed a differ- 
ent analogy to set forth the idea of fruitfulness in 
his disciples. It was when he spoke of himself 
as the true vine, of which his Father is the hus- 
bandman, and in which his disciples are the 
branches. " As the branch," said he, " can not 
bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine : 
no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am 
the vine, ye are the branches : he that abideth 
in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth 
much fruit : for without me ye can do nothing." 
" Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear 
much fruit : so shall ye be my disciples," — 
that is, the fact that you are indeed my dis 
ciples shall be evidenced by your fruitfulness. 
In this illustration, fruitfulness is nothing less 
than the entire effect wrought in the soul and 



FRUITFULNESS. 243 

life of the believer by that vital relation to Christ 
which is represented in the words, " Abide in 
me, and I in you." 

Christian fruitfulness *is mentioned in yet an- 
other connection. Turn once more to that re- 
markable passage which I have already so often 
commended to your attention, and in which the 
exceeding great and precious promises are referred 
to as an encouragement to diligence in a spiritual 
self-discipline. " For this very reason," — be- 
cause such promises are given to us, — "add to 
your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, knowledge ; and 
to knowledge, temperance ; and to temperance, pa- 
tience ; and to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, 
brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness, char- 
ity. For if these things be in you, and abound, 
they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor 
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." The meaning is not that these things are 
to be the cause of fruitfulness, but that they are 
fruitfulness itself. It is in these things that fruit- 
fulness consists. They shall constitute you " nei- 
ther barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our 
Lord." 



244 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

Your mind already adverts to passages in which 
" the fruit of the Spirit " is described. " The 
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suflPer- 
ing, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temper- 
ance." " The fruit of the Spirit is in all good- 
ness, and righteousness, and truth." Fruitfulness, 
as thus described, is the aim and appropriate result 
of those Divine influences by which the soul is 
renewed in the likeness of God. 

It is evident, then, what Christ means when he 
says to his disciples, " Herein is my Father glori- 
fied, that ye bear much fruit." Christian fruit- 
fulness may be regarded as the effect of Divine 
truth received into a believing mind and incorpo- 
rated into the soul's life. It may be regarded as 
resulting from that spiritual union between Christ 
and his disciples, which he represents when he 
calls himself the vine and them the branches. It 
may be regarded as the true proficiency of a dis- 
ciple in the knowledge of his Lord and Saviour. 
It may be regarded as the fruit of that Holy Spirit 
of promise by which believers are sealed, and 
which is the earnest of their inheritance. But 
under all these aspects it is one and the same 



FRUITFULNESS. 245 

thing, — nothing else than the maturity, the 
beauty, the worth, and the blessedness of a com- 
plete Christian character. 

I have already warned you that a mistaken con- 
ception of what is meant by fruitfulness may have 
the effect of misdirecting your aspirations and en- 
deavors in the Christian life. Be careful, then, to 
set before yourself a full and clear idea of what it 
is which constitutes productiveness and fruitfulness 
in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is 
a too common error to suppose that the fruitful- 
ness of a Christian is to be found, not simply in 
his own interior life, but rather in results external 
to himself, — not simply in what he becomes under 
God's renewing and sanctifying work, but rather 
in what he brings to pass, and in the conviction 
which he produces on other minds, — not so much 
in the reality of a life which is hid with Christ in 
God, as in the outward manifestation and visibility 
of such a life, in the impression which it makes on 
beholders, and in the efficacy of its influence on 
the church or on the world. If you take up such 
a notion of what you are to aim at in undertaking 
and professing to follow Christ, you will be in 



246 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

danger of striving to seem holy instead of striving 
to be holy. You will be in danger of substituting 
the formalisms and conventionalisms that happen 
to be in vogue among the religious people of your 
acquaintance, for the simple reality of trusting in 
Christ and walking humbly with God. You will 
be in danger of falling into habits of religious affec- 
tation in manners and speech and in demonstra- 
tions of sanctimony or of zeal, instead of simply 
striving to receive and obey the word of Christ, 
to grasp the hope he sets before you, and to become 
like him in the temper and spirit of your mind. 
Instead of asking, in the simplicity of a believing 
and obedient spirit, what the God in whom you 
trust would have you do, and doing all things 
heartily as to the Lord and not to men, you will 
be continually and irresistibly tempted to ask. 
What will men say or think about me ? — how 
shall I make the right impression upon them ? — 
how shall I make them feel that my religion is a 
reality ? All this tends to fix your mind more 
upon how you appear than upon what you are, 
and to make you more sohcitous about the impres- 
sions and opinions of men than about what your 



FRUITFULNESS. 247 

own heart is in the sight of God. Thus it is that 
many a man falls by degrees into an unintended 
and unconscious hypocrisy, — acquires a habit of 
using religious words and phrases by rote and with 
little recollection or sense of what they mean, — 
gradually assumes in his countenance and manner 
an expression which, being designed for impres- 
sion, is unnatural and perhaps repulsive. I do not 
warn you against seriousness and gravity of speech 
or of deportment, but this I say, watch and 
pray that you enter nofinto temptation, — watch 
and pray that you may he always under the full 
power of things unseen and eternal, rather than 
that you may seem so. 

By the same sort of misconception you may be 
led to undervalue many of the most important ele- 
ments of Christian character. It is easy for you 
to take up the notion that if only you can be what 
is called an active Christian, you will be of course 
a complete and eminent Christian. Sometimes we 
see a man who is conspicuous in efforts of one sort 
or another for the advancement of religion, zealous 
for the church, or for this or that religious enter- 
prise, but who, in exercising himself unto godli- 



248 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

ness, is far from giving due attention to the things 
that are true and honest and just and lovely and 
of good report. It is easy for you to fall into just 
that error, and to assume that what Christ looks 
for in you is nothing else than zeal for the church, 
or zeal for the interest of religion. Do not think 
that I disparage religious activity as an element of 
Christian character, nor that I would in any way 
discourage or check your zeal to do all you can for 
Christ, and for the souls of men. On the con- 
trary, I would have you understand distinctly, and 
remember, that the spirit of Christ in all his disci- 
ples is essentially a beneficent and active spirit, a 
spirit of zeal for God, and of aggression against the 
darkness and wickedness of this world. I would 
have you understand that where there is no sym- 
pathy with Christ in his redeeming work, no com- 
passion for those who are dead in trespasses and 
sins, no love for the church and kingdom of Christ, 
no readiness for self-denial in the service of Christ, 
the spirit of Christ is not manifest. There may 
be an unblamed and unsuspected uprightness in all 
human relations, and with it there may be com- 
bined a most attractive personal amiableness like 



FRUITFULNESS. 249 

that of the young man whom Jesus loved ; and yet, 
if there is no sympathy with Christ and no readi- 
ness for self-sacrifice in his service, the one thing 
lacking, as in the case of that young man, implies 
a fatal deficiency. But I would have you under- 
stand also, and remember, that no manifestation 
of zeal for the Lord, no bustle or eelat of religious 
activity, no restlessness of endeavor in enterprises 
of philanthropy or of moral or religious propa- 
gandism, no readiness to give, to suffer, or to die 
in behalf of a principle, can turn the balance 
against the want of personal integrity, of strict 
veracity and honesty, of thorough purity, of con- 
scientiousness in all those ordinary and homely 
virtues without which the profession of saintliness 
is an abhorrence to God. A man may not only 
have the gift of prophecy and understand all mys- 
teries and all knowledge without the principle of 
holy love, — he may not only preach to others and 
be himself a castaway, — he may even bestow all 
his goods to feed the poor, and give his body to be 
burned, in the fervor of a zeal which is not holy 
love and has no fellowship with Christ. If there 
be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on 



250 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report. Remember 
that " the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance." Remember that charity needs 
no conspicuousness of position, no celebrity or 
notoriety, no trophies of success, as essential to its 
reality. It suffereth long and is kind ; it envieth 
not ; it vaunteth not itself, — is not puffed up, — 
doth not behave itself unseemly, — seeketh not its 
own, — is not easily provoked, — thinketh no evil, 

— rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the 
truth, — beareth all things, — believeth all things, 

— hopeth all things, — > endureth all things ; and 
in order to this it needs no splendor of gifts, no 
rare felicity of opportunities, no great cloud of 
mortal witnesses, no plaudits of this world's admi- 
ration. It may be as complete, as beautiful to the 
eye of God, and as true a manifestation of his 
glory, in the humblest position as anywhere else. 

Some really conscientious persons, whose desire 
and purpose to follow Christ need not be doubted, 



FRUITFULNESS. 251 

seem to misunderstand, in part, the application of 
that precept, " Let your light so shine before men, 
that they may see your good works, and glorify 
your Father which is in heaven." Forgetful that it 
is the nature of light to shine, they do not observe 
that what the precept requires of them is simply 
that interior life of purity and love, that inward 
holiness, which can not but shine. If it be said to 
the watchman on the mountain-top, " Let your 
light shine," he has only to kindle his beacon, and 
its warning flame flashes across the valleys. If it 
be said to the keeper of a light -house, " Let your 
light sliine," he has only to light up the lamp in 
his turret, and far over the waves it shines. So 
when Christ says to us, " Let your light shine 
before men, — let it so shine, that they may see 
your good works, and glorify your Father which is 
in heaven," we need not concern ourselves about 
the impression which our conduct may make on 
other minds ; we need only take care that in 
thought, as well as in word and deed, our lives are 
humble, holy, Christ-like ; and our light will shine, 
the self-same light that shone in Christ. If we 
begin to be anxious about the impression we are 
making upon men, we are immediately in danger 



252 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTURE. 

of becoming like the hypocrites, whose ruling 
motive in their works of outward goodness, or of 
outward godliness, is that they may be seen of 
men. The habit of doins; thino;s for effect or im- 
pression is dangerous. It is affectation ; and affec- 
tation is, in its degree, hypocrisy. 

" Let this mind be in you, which was also in 
Christ." It seems almost irreverent even to in- 
quire what the effect would be on our estimate of 
Christ's human character, if we could imagine him 
as doing any thing for the sake of appearances. 
Who does not feel that the glory that shines in the 
human life of our Redeemer would not be there, 
but for his perfect unaffectedness ? The glory of 
Christ in his followers is dimmed, if it does not 
shine naturally, and, as it were, unconsciously, 
" in simplicity and godly sincerity." So let your 
light shine. 

Remember, then, that the aim of all your self- 
culture as a disciple of Christ must be not the 
show and seeming of a Christian life, but the 
reality. A completely Christ-like character is to 
be valued for its own sake, and not for the sake of 
what men may think of it. God values it for 
what it is, and not for the impression which it 



FRUITFULNESS. 253 

makes. A truly and completely Christian cha- 
racter is nothing; else than a Christ-like soul. 

A Christ-like soul ! Think, you whose eye is 
on this page, how blessed it is to be like Christ, 
not in profession only, but in reality ; not only in 
the show and seeming of a Christian character, 
but in the soul's life. Think how possible it is for 
you to be thus blessed. Think of God's love to 
you, testified in Christ's self-sacrifice for you. 
Think of God's willingness to give the Holy 
Spirit to them that ask him. Think of those 
exceeding great and precious promises which- are 
given to you in the gospel, that by them you may 
be a partaker of the Divine nature. It is possible 
for you to become — by God's mercy and gracious 
help, by his blessing on your diligence, by his 
answer to your prayers, by his performance of his 
promises — a Christ-like soul. 

Is this your aspiration ? Are you hoping, pray- 
ing, and striving to realize in your own experience 
the blessedness of a Christ-like soul ? There is no 
really Christian self-culture which aspires to any 
thing less than this. Assuming that such is your 
aspiration, I have endeavored to help you by 
these friendly counsels, and to encourage you by 



254 CHRISTIAN SELF-CULTUEE. 

showing that this is the hope which the gospel sets 
before you. All that I have written is worthless 
to you, if you are not striving to " put on the 
Lord Jesus Christ," and to be transformed into his 
likeness "by the renewing of your mind." 

Be assured that there is nothing extravagant or 
unwarranted in your aspiring to all the dignity 
and blessedness of a Christ-like soul. In truth 
there is no other just conception of a Christian 
life than this, that it is the life of a renewed soul 
growing more and more like Christ. To " put on 
the new man " is nothing else than to " put on 
Christ ; " and the new life is in us only as that 
mind is in us which was also in Christ. Ask 
what the blessedness is to which they that love 
God are " called according to his purpose." Let 
an apostle answer. *' Whom he did foreknow, he 
also did predestinate ; " — to what ? — "to be 
conformed to the image of his Son that he might 
be the first-born among many brethren." [Rom. 
viii. 28, 29.] It is to this that you are invited. 
" That ye might be partakers of the divine na- 
ture," is the end for which are given all the offers 
and promises which constitute the gospel. 

If you have heartily undertaken the self-culture 



FRUITFULNESS. 255 

to which the gospel calls us, you are already be- 
coming a Christ-like soul. If you have received 
Christ, you are one of those whom he has made 
the sons of God, — himself the first-born among 
many brethren. " Behold what manner of love 
the Father hath bestowed on us that we should be 
called the sons of God ! " " It doth not yet 
appear what we shall be ; but we know that when 
he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall 
see him as he is." A Christ-hke soul is a Godlike 
soul ; and that likeness to God perfected in the 
soul, is the consummation of blessedness. Your 
assurance of hope is : "I shall be satisfied when 
I awake with thy likeness." Meanwhile, all the 
progress of your Christian self-culture is a prog- 
ress m likeness to Christ, " whom not having seen 
you love, in whom, though now you see him not, 
yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable 
and full of glory, receiving the end of your 

FAITH, THE SALVATION OF YOUR SOUL." 



THE END. 



Theological Semmary-Speer Library 



