2 Peter 1:6 Sermons: and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control patience; and in patience godliness;

Activity necessary to piety

I. Now as to THE HOMELY VIRTUE ITSELF, "giving all diligence." We all know what "diligence" means, but it is worth while to point out that the original meaning of the word is not so much diligence as haste. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angel's salutation and annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the murderous hurry with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the Baptist's head. It is the word with which the apostle, left solitary in his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to "make haste so as to come to him before winter." Thus, the first notion in the word is haste. which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. When haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in running the race set before us. But, with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to be let slip unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the sluggard's garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling that "the night is far spent, the day is at hand." The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all procrastination. "Now is the accepted time." "Wherefore, giving all haste, add to your faith." Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by "earnestness," which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing. There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The engine that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb, and therefore it is terrible. Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in the text. "Diligence" is the panacea for all diseases of the Christian life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. If you want to be a strong Christian — that is to say, a happy man — you must bend your back to the work and "give all diligence." Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian by any other course than "giving all diligence." It is a homely virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this church and our own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.

II. Note THE WIDE FIELD OF ACTION FOR THIS HOMELY GRACE. First, note that in our text, "giving all diligence, add to your faith." That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. He has just been saying that God has "given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and exceeding great and precious promises." The Divine gift, then, is everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for such a life already given you, see that you "bring besides into" the heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring, namely, "all diligence." The phrase implies that diligence is our contribution. "Diligence" makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's gifts ours. Then, again, the apostle gives an even more remark able view of the possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers exercise it in order to "make their calling and election sure." If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded continence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only "acceptance in the beloved," the short road to it is the well known and trite path of toil in the Christian life. Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain "the full assurance of hope." The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed by our letter, when Peter says, "seeing that we look for such things, let us be diligent, that we may be found of Him in peace with out spot, and blameless." If we are to be "found in peace," we must be "found spotless," and if we are to be "found spotless" we must be "diligent." What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together all these items! A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a peaceful welcome, at last!

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Diligence

A. Symson.

1. That it is not enough to flee and abstain from our fleshly lusts, and so perform the duty of mortification, unless also we add unto the same, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, and the like Christian graces.

2. That naturally we are sluggish, slothful, and dull in the performance of holy duties, and therefore have need to be often roused up, admonished, and warned to perform our duty with all diligence.

3. That we cannot attain unto any of the graces of God's Spirit without diligence, painful labour, and travail.

4. That the gifts and graces of God's Spirit are worth the pains taking, worthy I say, both in regard of their nature and in regard of the recompense which we receive by them.

5. That neither the unlawful pleasures of this world are to be sought at all with any diligence, or the lawful pleasures and profits thereof with all diligence.

6. That this diligence which is required must be total, both inward and outward — = outward in every member of the body, inward in every faculty of the soul.To the first I answer, that God doth require this great diligence in the apprehension and application of His benefits.

1. Because of the worth and excellency of His benefits.

2. Because of their inefficacy unto us if not apprehended and applied by us.

3. Because of the great profit which we shall reap thereby, being by us rightly apprehended and with all diligence applied.

4. Because of the great diligence which Satan and his adherents, the world and the flesh, do use to deprive us of the same.

5. Because the work is great, we unwieldy, our time both short and uncertain, yea, and not being diligently apprehended as they are diligently offered, they are not afterward so easily attained.

(A. Symson.)

Christian diligence

Expository Outlines.

I. THE GRACES WHICH WE ARE HERE EXHORTED TO CULTIVATE.

II. THE CONSIDERATIONS BY WHICH THESE EXHORTATIONS ARE ENFORCED, By cultivating these various graces we shall show —

1. That our piety is not merely speculative and nominal.

2. They will contribute materially to our spiritual illumination.

3. A consciousness of our personal acceptance.

4. Perseverance in the face of temptations and difficulties.

5. A joyful and triumphant death.

(Expository Outlines.)

A downright Christian

It was the saying of a shrewd thinker: "If it is worth while being a Christian at all, it is better to be a downright Christian."

Christian Armour.

To purity activity seems essential. Fill your room with the purest air, and shut it up for one month, and when you open it the air is foul. Its stagnation has made it impure. The same is true of water; no matter how pure it may be, let it become stagnant, and it grows fetid and deleterious. The spiritual world presents an analogy. Idleness is the stagnation of the mind, and, like that of the air and water, it breeds impurity.

(Christian Armour.)

Connection with preccding verses

A. R. Fausset, M. A.

"As He hath given us ALL things needful for life and godliness (so), do you give ALL diligence," etc. The oil and flame are given wholly by God's grace, and "taken "by believers; their part is to trim their lamps.

(A. R. Fausset, M. A.)

Practice necessary to perfection

C. H. Spurgeon.

A neighbour near my study persists in practising upon the flute. He bores my ears as with an auger, and renders it almost an impossibility to think. Up and down his scale he runs remorselessly, until even the calamity of temporary deafness would almost be welcome to me. Yet he teaches me that I must practise if I would be perfect; must exercise myself unto godliness if I would be skilful; must, in fact, make myself familiar with the Word of God, with holy living, and saintly dying. Such practice, moreover, will be as charming as my neighbour's flute is intolerable.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

Exercise develops strength

C. Graham.

As in the body so is it in the soul, exercise develops strength. The Laplanders and the Patagonians are in climates almost equally cold. The Laplanders are a small race, the Patagonians a large one. What makes the difference? The Laplanders, supported by their reindeer, spend most of their time in indolence; the Patagonians are an active race, and spend much of their time in fishing and hunting. Hence the stunted development of the one, and the large dimensions of the other. It is thus grace expands by the activity of love.

(C. Graham.)

Add

Religion a principle of growth

An apostle's method of silencing objectors

Our age is writing "progress" on its banners. It bids us to forget the things that are behind, as incomplete and unsatisfactory, and to press toward those which are yet before us. We believe that the gospel, and it alone, adequately meets this deeply-seated craving of our times. Religion is a principle of perpetual progress. Setting before us, as the great end of our existence, and as the only perfect model of moral excellence, the Infinite Jehovah, it requires, and it also ministers an ever-growing conformity to Him. "Grow in grace," is the apostle's injunction to all recipients of that grace. It is the secret and rule of personal reform, constantly advancing, and of social amelioration, enfranchisement and elevation.

1. The Church needs in this age to be kept in mind of the great truth, that there remains yet much land to be possessed.

2. And if, from the peculiar state and needs of the churches, we turn to review the present aspect of the world, we seem to discover similar reasons why the churches should not, now at least, overlook the fact that the gospel is, to its obedient disciples, a principle of continuous advancement, a law of expansion and moral elevation. The world, falsely or with justice, is shouting its own progress, and promising in the advance ment of the masses, the moral development of the individual. It is an age of rapid discovery in the physical sciences. The laws and uses of matter receive profound investigation, and each day are practically applied with some new success. Yet physical science can certainly neither create nor replace moral truth. The crucible of the chemist cannot disintegrate the human soul, or evaporate the moral law. But besides these advances in physical science, our age is one of wondrous political revolutions. It is again, even in lands and governments where political revolution is not needed or is not desired, an age of social reform.

3. And now, having seen how in the aspects, both secular and ecclesiastical, of our age, Christians were especially summoned to evolve what of progression there was in their own faith, let us see how in the inspired presentations of that faith, the fullest provision is made for man's moral growth. Were there no other precept: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," would be sufficient to show how a limitless expansion of our intellectual and moral stature was set before us in the gospel. To man, the heir of immortality, it prescribes the law and warrants the hope of an immortal progression. There are stages in Christian attainment; and one but prepares for another, and, without all, the Christian cannot be fully useful or perfectly blessed.

4. From the word "add," a heedless reader might infer that all the graces thus clustered were independent each of the other, and might be selected or omitted as each disciple saw fit; and that a man might at least be safe in having but the first, though in his negligence lacking all the rest. But such is not the apostle's meaning. The believer is called upon to furnish not a single and isolated grace, but to supply "adding "one to another, the whole consenting train, and harmonious interwoven troop, the complete sisterly choir of Christian graces. He is to look upon the one in this cluster of Christian excellences as fragmentary and untuned without the others. The one grace is the supplement and complement indispensable to the symmetry and melody of all its sister graces. Now in this choir or train Faith is the elder born, and upon it all these other graces depend. It alone justifies, but as the old theologians were fond of saying, not being alone. It comes singly to the task of man's justification, but in the heart and life of the justified man it does not come as a solitary, building there its lonely hermitage.

(W. R. Williams.)

Christian growth

H. Macmillan, D. D.

The word which has been translated "add "is a very pictorial term, and refers to a choir of well-trained musicians. The musical illustration of Christian growth is a very pro found and far-reaching one. Keats says that "heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter," implying that there is a music which appeals to the soul finer than anything that can be expressed by human voice or musical instrument. Beethoven was deaf, heard no outward sounds, but the soul of music was in him, and therefore with the deeper inner ear he heard continuously the Divine music to which all things are attuned. Music is the great principle of order. It enters into the essence of all things. The music of the spheres is not a mere poetic, but a scientific phrase. Everything speaks to the ear of the thoughtful of the wonderful rhythm of the universe. What nature does unconsciously and willlessly, we are to do consciously and willingly. We are to keep step and time to the music of the universe — and to add to our faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity — and thus practically make the statutes of the Lord our song in the house of our pilgrimage. There are two ways in which we may add to our faith all the graces which the apostle enumerates. We may add them as a builder adds stone to stone in his wall; or we may add them as a plant adds cell to cell in its structure. Whether, therefore, we take our illustration from architecture or from plant life, the essential point, as implied by the significance of the word "add" in the original, is that growth should be harmonious. Architecture is said to be "frozen music." This is true of the commonest wayside wall. What is it that makes the sight of a well-built wall so pleasing to the eye? What is it that makes building a wall such an interesting employment that children take instinctively to it? Is it not the love of symmetry — the delight in shaping large and small, rough and smooth, pieces of stone, adapting them one to the other, and placing them in such a way that together they make a symmetrical structure? And if we see this curious harmony in the humblest rustic building, how grandly does it come out in the magnificent Gothic cathedral, where every part blends faultlessly and carries out the design of the architect; and clustered pillar, and aerial arch, and groined roof soar up in matchless symmetry, and the soul is held spellbound by the poetry which speaks through the entire structure! There is a remarkable peculiarity in the text in the original which must be specially pointed out. The preposition which we have translated "to" should be rendered "in," and so rendered, we are significantly taught, that Christian growth is not by mechanical addition, but by vital increase. We are to add not "to" our faith, but "in" our faith, virtue, and "in" our virtue, knowledge, and so on. The first thing that we are commanded by the apostle to "add" to our faith is virtue, meaning by this term vigour, manliness. Our faith is to be itself a source of power to us. We are to be strong in faith. It is to be to us the power of God unto salvation, enabling us to overcome the temptations and evils of the world, and to rise above all the infirmities of our own nature. Our faith should be manifested as it was in olden times by a victorious strength which is able to overcome the world, which fears the Lord and knows no other fear. To this strength or manliness we are further commanded to "add" knowledge. In our manliness we are to seek after knowledge. The quality of courage is to be shown by the fearlessness of our researches into all the works and ways of God. We are not to be deterred by any dread of consequences from investigating and finding out the whole truth. The wisdom from above includes not only the knowledge that we are pardoned sinners, but also all that can furnish the understanding and fill the soul with food for its high capacities and boundless appetites. With wonderful sagacity the apostle commands us to add to our knowledge temperance; for there is a tendency in knowledge to puff us up and fill our hearts with pride. Temperance gives us just estimates of ourselves and of the world. It gives us the true knowledge of all things. It enables us to use our knowledge aright, to convert thought into action, and vision into life. We are to know ourselves and our relations to God's Word in order to regulate our life accordingly. To this self-government we must add patience. As the plant slowly ripens its fruit, so we are to ripen our Christian character by patient waiting and patient enduring. It is a quiet virtue this patience, and is apt to be overlooked and underestimated. But in reality it is one of the most precious of the Christian graces. The noisy virtues — the ostentatious graces have their day; patience has eternity. And while it is the most precious, it is also the most difficult. It is far easier to work than to wait; to be active than to be wisely passive. But it is when we are still that we know God; when we wait upon God that we renew our strength. Patience places the soul in the condition in which it is most susceptible to the quickening influences of heaven, and most ready to take advantage of new opportunities. But to this patience must be united godliness. Godliness is Godlikeness, having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, viewing everything from the Divine point, and living in our inner life as fully in the light of His presence as we live in our outer life in the light of the sun. And exercising ourselves unto this godliness, our patience will have a Divine quality of strength, endurance, beauty imparted to it such as no mere natural patience possesses. We wrong God when we are unkind, ungenerous, and uncourteous to each other. But brotherly kindness is apt to be restricted towards friends only — towards those who belong to the same place or the same church, or who are Christians. It must, therefore, be conjoined to charity. In our brotherly kindness we are to exercise a large-hearted charity. Such, then, are the graces which we are enjoined by the apostle to add to each other, to develop from each other, not as separate fruits dispersed widely over the branches of a tree, but as the berries of a cluster of grapes growing on the same stem, mutually connected and mutually dependent. This is the ideal of a perfect Christian character. It must have these parts; it must be characterised by these qualities, These are the fruits of the Spirit. These are the products of genuine faith. They are not like the links of an iron chain, manufactured separately, and mechanically added to each other; but they are like the living cells of a growing plant, in which one cell gives birth to another, and communicates its own qualities to it.

(H. Macmillan, D. D.)

J. Sherlock.

"Add to your faith virtue." "You have faith." This is assumed, you perceive. "Now," says the apostle, "let your faith be associated with virtue." The word is used in only three passages in the New Testament. It is a word derived from the name of the Greek god of war, and hence would give some countenance to those who would simply make it to mean fortitude, or courage. Others take it in another sense, by associating it with rectitude of conduct — everything that is "lovely and of good report," in conduct. For my part, I do not see how we can do without either meaning. The apostle speaks, in one of his passages, of our being "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, to show forth the virtues of Him who hath called us" that is, "to show forth the praises"; so to exhibit God in connection with our faith in His Son, that men may praise Him, seeing how His name and His law are magnified in the work of redeeming love. In another passage, in the Philippians, the Apostle Paul uses, in a more general sense, the same word: "If there be any virtue" — if there be anything at all commendable. Now, I think, we must look at the word as having both these senses. "See," the apostle says, "that your profession of faith is in connection with such conduct that the name of God may be magnified in you and by you." But, then, why should we exclude the idea of courage? Right conduct in the midst of evil men; consistency of conduct in the midst of a world lying in the wicked one; forgetting all distinctions of time, or country, or circumstances, to take God's mercy, and apply it to our own souls; to accept Christ as God's well-beloved Son; to look right into the grave, and think of the judgment-seat will require fortitude; and take the word, in whatever sense you please, fortitude and courage and rectitude of conduct must, says the apostle, be associated with your profession of faith in Christ Jesus. But then the apostle says we are to associate also "knowledge"; that is, he enjoins upon us to be intelligent professors of faith in Christ Jesus. God puts none of our faculties under ban; God does not ask any man whom He has endowed with faculties, by which He may be glorified by His creature, to keep them in abeyance, to leave them uncultivated. We are to have the soul filled with wisdom from above, and to seek all kinds of wisdom, that we may consecrate them to the service of God. And mark how necessary it is for the believer in Christ Jesus ever to be growing in intelligence. New errors creep into the Church; new forms of error are presented to the believer. He is not to be satisfied with the instruction which God blessed to the bringing him into living relationship with Christ Jesus. We ought, as a matter of conscience, and as a matter of duty, to seek to increase our intelligence, that we may be ready always to give an answer to every man, and a reason of a hope that is in us. And then the apostle enjoins "temperance" upon us. The simple meaning of the idea is self-government, or self-restraint, rather. This was one of the virtues which the Grecian philosophers laid great stress upon, in this general sense, not simply in eating and drinking, but in everything that referred to the passions of men. As the apostle says, "Be angry, and sin not." If there is just cause of anger, we are to be moderate in our anger. And the Apostle Paul speaks of persons who are "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God"; that is, they are not temperate in their pleasures. There is nothing contradictory between this temperance and earnestness. Now, a man may be earnest without intelligence; he may be zealously affected even in a bad cause; but temperance — prudence, that is, moderation in our views, and in the mode of carrying out our views — may be found in connection with great earnestness. But, then, to "temperance" we are to add "patience." Even when you regulate yourselves most, and have your spirits under the directing influences of the Spirit of God, you cannot possibly live and act for Christ without finding some difficulties. "But," says the apostle, "just quietly endure all things; just patiently persevere in all that concerns your Christian course." "And, then," says the apostle, "associate also with these things godliness." The word means certain acts of worship presented to God; but it means more than this, it means a reverential spirit, by which our acts of worship are regulated. Is it not remarkable how much our religious worship is dependent upon certain influences, certain associations, certain circumstances? You perceive a man who has associated early in life with persons who frequent the house of God, and he contracts a kind of habit, and it is a long while before he can shake off this habit. Now, just change a man's position in society; see what the increase of this world's goods will do for a man; you see him slackening his attendance at the house of God, and leaving certain acts of worship that he once regularly engaged in. I have seen men who rigidly observed certain outward acts of worship when they were at home. I have seen them give the lamentable proof that it was all a matter of external influence. And therefore the apostle says, "Associate with everything that is right, everything that is virtuous in conduct, godliness": that is, a devout and a reverential spirit, manifested in connection with your devotedness to Christ and Him crucified. But the apostle says, "Not simply towards God, but towards your fellow-men." Christ Himself enjoined upon His disciples love towards each other, by which they should manifest that they loved Him.

(J. Sherlock.)

Additions to faith

W. Jay.

I. THE ADDITIONS WHICH YOU ARE TO MAKE TO YOUR FAITH. The apostle does not exhort Christians to seek after faith. This he supposes them to possess already. You say you have faith — but faith without works is dead, being alone. Faith resembles a foundation, of high importance in case of a building, but useless ii no superstructure be reared. It is only a beginning, which is nothing without progress. What are clear notions unless they influence; or proper motives unless they impel? Moses had faith, and he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.

1. The first addition which he requires of you as believers is virtue — courage. This principle in the whole of your Christian course will be found indispensably necessary. You live in a world unfriendly to religion. It will be found no easy thing to deny yourselves and take up your cross, to pluck out a right eye. Some of these difficulties, indeed, might be avoided if you were only to be religious and not to appear so. If we trace things to their origin we shall find a thousand evils springing, not from ignorance but cowardice. Pilate condemned a Saviour of whose innocency he was conscious because of the Jews. Many of the Pharisees "believed on Him, but feared to confess Him lest they should be put out of the synagogue." The disciples were afraid and forsook Him.

2. A second addition is knowledge. And this very properly follows the former. It teaches us that courage is a force which wisdom is to employ; courage may urge us to undertake the war, but judgment is to manage it. And hence it will be easy to determine the nature of this qualification. It is practical knowledge; it is what we commonly mean by prudence, which is knowledge applied to action. It is what Paul recommends when he says, "Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Walk in wisdom towards them that axe without, redeeming the time." This kind of knowledge results principally from experience and observation; and he is blameable indeed who does not grow wiser as he grows older, and who does not make every day a correction of the former. Our own history affords us some of the best materials to improve and embellish our character. We should derive strength from our weaknesses, and firmness from our falls. But, alas I what numbers are there upon whom the continuance of life and all means of improvement seem to be thrown away. They have eyes, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not. Whereas "the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way." "The prudent man looketh well to his going." He draws down his knowledge from speculation, and uses it in common life. He judges of the value of his notions by their utility. He studies his character and condition. He examines his dangers, his talents, his opportunities.

3. You are to avoid intemperance. There is a sense in which this word may be applied to the mind as well as the body.

4. You are to add to your temperance patience. There is an obvious and striking relation between these. The one requires us to bear, the other to forbear. The one regards the good things, the other the evil things of the world. By temperance we are preserved under the smiles of prosperity, and by patience we encounter the frowns of adversity.

5. Godliness is indispensable. Courage and prudence, temperance and patience, would be no Christian qualities, if in the exercise of them we were not influenced by suitable regards to God. Without this reference our religion is nothing more than morality.

6. We are to add to godliness brotherly kindness.

7. To brotherly kindness, charity.

II. INQUIRE HOW THIS IS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED. The apostle tells us. It is by giving all diligence.

1. These things deserve your diligence. It is pitiable to see men employing their zeal and consuming their strength upon trifles. But this cannot be said of spiritual blessings and graces. These are in the sight of God of great price. They are necessary to man. They purify his passions, and tranquillise his conscience, They enrich, they dignify him, they are his perfection. They make him happy.

2. Diligence will infallibly secure these things.

3. There is no attaining these things without diligence. Diligence is indispensable.(1) Indispensable if we appeal to analogy. You must labour even for "the meat that perisheth."(2) Indispensable if we appeal to the character of a Christian. He is a merchant, a scholar, a husbandman, a traveller, a soldier — the anxiety of the merchant, the application of the scholar, the hardy toil of the husbandman, the wearying progress of the traveller, the painful exercise of the soldier, are images which ill accord with indolence and ease.(3) Indispensable if we appeal to the promises of the gospel. These all require it, encourage it, produce it.

(W. Jay.)

The Christian chorus

O. P. Gifford.

The word translated "add" takes us back to an old Grecian custom; it means to be a chorus-leader, to furnish a chorus at one's own expense. The Greeks worshipped their gods through a hired chorus. When the poet had completed his work, he called upon the archon (or city mayor) to grant a chorus. He in turn appealed to a wealthy citizen called a choragus, who collected a chorus, hired a trainer, and in time rendered the poet's composition to the delight of the citizens and the glory of the gods. As a reward he received a tripod, which he consecrated, and in some cases placed on a monument. The Athenian street lined with these memorials was called "the avenue of tripods." Into this custom as a mould Peter pours the truth of God's gift and man's duty. Vers. 2-4 set forth God's gift to man, the composition of Jehovah, the sacred score, the expression of His life and love. Grace and peace are allotted to us; they are not obtained by effort, but are gifts of God. All that pertains to life and godliness comes through precious promises. He who takes the promises of faith takes the life of God into his soul. Here stands the poet with his finished work, pleading for a chance to help the people and honour the gods. He has put himself into the composition, it is as yet only a promise of harmony; the chorus is organised, trained, the people gather, the soul of the composer finds expression, the people are inspired to nobler lives, the gods are glorified. Until the archon accepts the poet's promise, and the chorus renders it, the poet is dumb. God has given Himself in great and precious promises, completed His work, and now calls upon men to accept and fill the universe with Divine harmony. Vers. 5-7 give us man's duty growing out of God's gift. His work is the inspiration to, not the substitute for our work. God operates, man must co-operate. The air is free, therefore breathe it; the earth is rich, therefore till it; the seed is vital, sow it; the sea is wide, launch out upon it. Opportunity means duty; gifts bring obligations. Peter is writing to Christians — to "them that have obtained like precious faith." Faith is a present possession, something assumed, to which other things are to be added. Yet faith is but one grace, one instrument in chorus; without it the others are useless; with it alone you can never render God's composition. A solo is not a chorus. Beethoven and Wagner cannot be rendered by one instrument; much less can God be set forth by one virtue. "Add to your faith virtue." Not virtue in the narrow sense of moral excellence, but of the energy which Christians are to exhibit, as God exerts His energy upon them. Faith in "the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" must be an energetic faith. The verb of life is passive toward God, but active toward men. The poet threw himself into his composition; the chorus was simply to take in what he gave, and pour it out upon others. God has put Himself into this gift of His; receiving it we are to yield our powers to it, and let His energy control us. A lazy Christian is a contradiction in terms. "And to energy knowledge" — intelligence, understanding, spiritual discernment. This looks two ways: understanding of truth, and discernment of what is right and wrong in life. As the years go by we should "know more and more of God's will as made known in His Word. Astronomy is ever finding new stars. Christians should find new depths, new heights, and new breadths in God's Word as the years go by. "And to knowledge temperance" — self-control, the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions. Keep the beast beneath the saddle. Eyegate and eargate must be guarded lest the enemy capture man's soul, and the door of speech be kept; for "If any man offend not in word," etc. "And to self-control patience" — the characteristic of a man who is unswerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings. Not only endurance of the inevitable, but the heroic, brave patience, with which a Christian not only bears but contends. Faith, energy, self-control count for little unless you endure; there are many Galatian Christians, who run well for a time; but the crowns are given to men who complete the race. Quick response on the part of the soil is no guarantee of a harvest; depth is as needful as willingness. "And to patience godliness" — reverence, respect, piety toward God; the confession of human dependence upon God manifested in conduct and conversation. Having faith, energy, self-control, and patience, there is danger lest we lose the fine sense of reverence; danger that we become irreverent. At the beginning of the Christian fife there is an awful sense of God; in too many cases this wears off, we become familiar with and degrade holy things and places, forget to bow in prayer, to close the eyes in worship. "And to godliness brotherly kindness" — love of the brethren. Nearness to Christ as the head means nearness to one another as members in particular; the muscles that bind the members to the head bind them to one another; the nerves that give the head control of the members are nerves of mutual icy and suffering. Godliness cannot be solitary and selfish, but must be social and unselfish; he who loves God must love his brother also. "And to brotherly kindness charity" — love, the broad affection which should characterise Christians, the love of men as men, "God is love." The object of God's love is the world; likeness to God means love to all mankind. Paul calls it the bond of perfectness, the sash which binds all other graces into place, the girdle over all; here it is the last instrument; without it you cannot render God's composition to the world. The first is faith" in God, the last is love to man, for faith in God begets His likeness in us. Yonder is God, the great composer, bidding us render His composition. What powers He must see in us; what confidence in our powers He must have; what a calling is ours! When St. Cecilia played the angels responded; well may they respond when human powers are counted worthy to render God's opera. Oh, men and women, rise to the dignity of your powers and possibilities! God waits for expression, angels wait to hear God expressed. There are eight instruments called for, the octave, the perfection of harmony; though the chorus be what no man can number, yet at the heart of it is the octave, and God calls on each man to use the powers in himself; each man has the octave in himself, and is called upon to chorus his powers, to train his gifts. Then we have (ver. 8) the consequences of faithful service. Grace and peace are multiplied through knowledge, and knowledge comes through faithful use of these powers. The musician who gives himself to the works of the master gains knowledge of the score, and is transformed into a sort of human photograph, possessed by and giving out the genius of the composer. So the Christian who tries to render God's composition comes into a fuller knowledge of it, sympathy with it; God's thoughts become his thoughts, and God's ways his ways; he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him. The composition controls the performer. On the other hand, "He that lacketh these things is blind," etc. The word "blind" here carries with it a curious figure, "darkened by smoke." Smoke-blinded, squinting his eyes up, forgetting the door of entrance and exit, bewildered, he gropes about searching in vain for the way out of sin. Refusing to give himself to God's gift, to cultivate the Christian graces, his horizon narrows, his life shrinks; what he has mastered sinks from him: forgiveness forgotten, sin returns, and he is lost. Hear God's call to constant practice, "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure." God's work is done, Christ has offered the finished opera; in grace as in nature the end of His work is the beginning of your work; where the composer stops the performer begins, and at this point the composer becomes dependent upon the performer. Enter diligently upon your part of the task; "by patient continuance in well-doing" thou shalt reach the final reward. And that is "an entrance shall be ministered unto you," etc. "Ministered" is the passive of the same verb that is translated "add" in ver.

5. As the city honoured the man who assumed the burden of the chorus, giving him a public triumph, rearing for him a tripod on the broad avenue, so God shall minister to those who chorus His works of grace mighty triumph in the kingdom of His Son.

(O. P. Gifford.)

Apostolic Christianity

H. W. Beecher.

Men are very fond of looking at the Divine government from that side where it can be the least seen, and where they are most subject to the errors of their own fluctuating imaginations, and to the obscurities of philosophy, falsely so called. It is far better, wherever we can, to look at the great truths of the Divine moral government, at the mystery of God's dealing with men in this world, from the human side. And this is what is done in this passage. It is, in brief, the inspired disclosure of the purposes of God in respect to men. What it is that the grace of God is attempting to do with those who are called in the Lord Jesus Christ, is set forth. We are called of God. In our version it is "to glory and virtue," but in the original it is "by glory and virtue," as if the call was not by the nature of man, but by the nature of God. By His own being, by the glorious and virtuous power of His own Spirit, He calls us up out of our lower life — out of that nature of ours which is physical. The apostle goes on to say, "On account of this, giving all diligence." You are called. The call is one which is to be answered. There is to be working together of the inspiration of the Divine Spirit and human endeavour, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you." "On account of this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue." What is faith? Supersensuousness. Well, what is supersensuousness? It is all that truth which exists beyond the discermnent of the senses. Now the apostle says, "Add to that faith virtue." "Add to this vision-seeing tendency of yours, which may etherealise itself and go off in a cloudy dream — add to this the practice of a wise and righteous kind. Add to your faith virtue, in the old Roman sense — true manhood." By the way, I have jumped a thought. It does not say "add to" in the original; it says, "Provide," or "develop in." It is as if he had had in his mind the thought of a plant. "Add to your faith, or in your faith, virtue; in other words, develop out of your faith virtue that is, practical godliness; and in your virtue or front out of your virtue, develop knowledge." By this is not meant, evidently, that knowledge which we gather by our senses — scientific knowledge, ideas, facts; but a higher knowledge that subtle intuition of truth which men have who live high and noble lives. That which is meant by temperance is self-government. And in temperance, or front it, develop patience — endurance — the spirit of bold, quiet waiting. "And to patience, godliness." That is, let your patience be not stoical. Let it not be stubborn, sulky. Let it be the waiting and endurance of a man who believes that God reigns, and that all the affairs of the universe are in His hands, and shall work toward good. "And to godliness, brotherly kindness." That is, let there be in your godliness a warm sympathy and affection, not only for yourself, but for your family, for all your near neighbours, for all your neighbours that are more remote, for all your townspeople, for all the world. "And to brotherly kindness, charity." Local affection and universal affection — add these. Here, then, is the apostle's conception of a Christian man's character, development, and destiny; and I remark —

I. This ideal destiny of man is one that shall lead hint into the likeness, into the sympathy, and into the participation of the Divine nature. The reason why we know so little of the Divine nature is, that we have so little ill ourselves that interprets it to us. I have groped to see if there are not at least some traces along the line of this march, and I think I see some. I observe, for instance, in the progress of the lower animal in man up toward the higher, that when it reaches the human race, the difference between undeveloped men and men who are developed, is the power to discern the invisible. That is, men whose forces are muscular are inferior to men whose forces are mental. And when the apostle says that we are to be partakers of the Divine nature, I say that the declaration is in harmony with everything that I see going on in human nature. We rise away from the animal toward the spiritual. We advance from lower manhood to higher manhood. The line is from the flesh toward the spirit. Therefore, it might naturally be expected that Christian character would consummate itself in the development of the Divine nature. That is the highest form of spiritual existence, and when the apostle says this is so, I am prepared to receive it, and to rejoice over it.

II. No man was ever converted to Christianity at one flash. No man ever built a house at a single blow, except in a summer dream. The conversion by which the Spirit of God starts a man, just starts him — that is all. It turns him away from the wrong direction. It turns him toward the right model. It gives his heart an inspiration for things higher, and then says to him, "Work out your salvation." A man who has a musical ear goes into a workshop and sees lying there large quantities of material of various kinds — iron, and steel, and copper, and brass — and he says, ".Let me make these available." And he takes the various kinds of metal, and puts them into a furnace and melts them, and pours the liquid which they form into a mould; and when it is cool and brought out it is a bell. Such is the result of the combination of all these incoherent substances. And when it is struck it is musical. And he says, "I have hit it! It is perfect!" But it is a monotone; and after some thought he says. "No, I have not reached perfection yet. There is more material here. What if I should make another bell?" So he goes to work and makes a second bell. And then he makes a third; and then a fourth. And some musician says, "Hang them up in yonder tower," and they are lifted up into the tower; and, swinging there, they ring out through the air glorious chants which call men to God's house. God has lifted up the spire or tower of the human soul, and has set in it some thirty bells; and they are all to be brought into accord. There are two or three that strike bass notes musically; but it is our business to bring harmony into the whole mighty collection of musical instruments that are swinging in the belfry of man's soul. No man is perfect until all his faculties are brought into harmonious play. God never put a faculty into a man which was not necessary; and if we are to be perfect, every one of our faculties must be developed and used. As God looks upon men, they are not perfect until they are built up into the lines and lineaments of the Lord Jesus Christ, and have partaken in part of the Divine nature. Then they are sons of God; and to be a son of God is something transcendently glorious.

III. The glorious ideal of Christianity, compared with all the current ideas, stands up in bright and rebuking contrast. How many are calling men to church-membership! How many are calling men to morality! How many men are called to philosophy! How many men are called to philanthropy! But such is not the call of God. God calls men to be partakers of the Divine nature. And the providence of Divine grace is working on that pattern incessantly. What the gardener means, and what Nature means, are very different things. What the grape-vine means is to drive out its branches, rank and strong, far and wide. What the gardener means is grapes; and therefore he cuts back the vine on every side. "Let me grow," says the vine. "Bear," says the vintner. "Give me more room for my leaves," says the vine. "Then give me more grapes for my wine," says the gardener. Men in this world are seeking to develop forces that shall be for their pleasure. God is meeting those who are His own with blows at every step, and beating them back. He is tempering this man's zeal by various shames. He is subjecting another man to such tests as shall compel him to come to endurance. In various ways God's providence is meddling with us. We are all praying that God's will may be done; but we do not like the answer to our prayer when it comes. The soul is a temple, anal God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it. Disinterested love is building it. Joy in the Holy Ghost is building it. All-penetrating faith is building it. Gentleness, and meekness, and sweet solicitude, and sympathy are building it. All virtue and all goodness are workmen upon that invisible temple which every man is. "Ye are the temple of God." The foundations are laid, the lines are drawn, and silently, night and day, the walls are carried up, tier after tier being laid; and when the temple is built it shall seem as if it were composed of precious stones — of beryl, and amethyst, and topaz, and diamond — so that at last when it is completed, and there comes the shout of "Grace, grace, unto it," it shall be a temple built in darkness to reveal light; built in sorrow to produce a joy which shall never die.

IV. If these views are generally correct, we may see in them the correction of many of the popular sayings and tendencies of the day. I am met at every step by those who say, "I ought to conform to the laws of my being." Which way is the eagle's nature, where he lies in his nest, or where he is, in the might of his power, poised under the sun, on a summer day? Is a man's nature that which he is born to, or that which he comes to by unfolding? Is a man's nature that which is furthest from, or nearest to, that which God meant should be the final estate to which he is to come? A man's real nature lies far beyond his present sphere. Nature in a man is not what he came from, but what he is going to. I am not, therefore, to take my models and patterns from behind; but this one thing I am to do — I am to forget the things which are behind, and to look on beyond, and to take my conceptions of true manhood and noble nature from the ideals which I form of God- and they are interpreted in my experience by God's Spirit.

(H. W. Beecher.)

Combination of Christian graces

James Hamilton, D. D.

You would think that flower-garden very defective which grew only one kind of flower, however beautiful that one may appear. It is the large variety of flowers that gives interest and pleasure in a garden. Thus, if you see a Christian with only one predominant grace, whatever it may be and however fine, he is lacking. It is the variety of graces, and their combination in the one life of experience and practice, that give charm and glory to Christian character, as it is the combination of colours that makes the light of the day.

(James Hamilton, D. D.)

An incongruous addition

James Hamilton, D. D.

As it is always incongruous to see a mighty foundation with a trivial superstructure, a block of granite the basis, and a mud wall the building, a foundation of jasper, and the remaining corners all brick; so where there really is precious faith to begin with, you grieve that there should not be added courage, knowledge, temperance; but wood, hay, stubble, trivial tastes, narrow notions, sectarian prejudices, a sour or censorious spirit, and manifold infirmities of the flesh and spirit.

(James Hamilton, D. D.)

Faith

Faith the root of Christian life

When the Vatican issued the celebrated Bull Unigenitus, the occasion of so many scandals, and of such protracted controversy, and in which it condemned, as abounding with most portentous errors, the excellent commentary upon the New Testament of the pious Father Quesnel, it selected as one of those errors, a remark of the good Jansenist upon the chapter before us, that "Faith is the first of graces, and the source of every other." And yet what else than this very sentiment does the language of the apostle here suggest? Faith is put by him first in order; and is it not so put by Peter's Lord? (John 3:36.)

I. FAITH, IN ITS WIDEST SENSE, IS TRUST OR BELIEF; confidence in the word, character, or work of another. Though requisite in religion, it is as much requisite elsewhere. Human society in its whole framework is so held together; and the kindreds and amusements and business of the world are presenting to the most earthly-minded, continual images and intimations of that faith which, when demanded of him by the Church and by the Word of God, he may sometimes affect to regard as strange and unexampled. The generous confidence of soldiers in a tried and heroic leader; the implicit confidence of his correspondents in a merchant of known means, and of proved integrity; the trust of the voyager in the intelligence and vigilance of the navigator; the unshaken assurance of a friend in the worth and affection of one whom he has long known and intimately loved — these are all but examples, in daily recurrence, of the use and the need, of the sweetness and of the power, of a reasonable faith and a well-placed trust. The faith of the gospel is something more than these, only as being trust in God. It is trust as to matters of higher concernment, and upon better warrant, and in a greater and better Being. It is a reliance on His true testimony. It is not irrational, for it has overwhelming evidence. Instead of its being, as the bigots of scepticism (for infidelity has its blind and bitter bigotry) represent it, a bandage for the eyes; and a manacle for the free hand, faith is really, to the eyes of the soul, a telescope bringing near the far glories of heaven: "the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of things hoped for." And it is, to the hand, a clue leading our steps out of the mazy dungeon of sin, and through the labyrinth of earth. It is a magnet pointing the voyager to his desired haven; the charter, to the criminal, of an undeserved and full pardon. And as this faith is trust in the truth of the ever-truthful God, it is highest wisdom, as it is reliance on the Omnipresent, the Almighty, and the everlasting Jehovah, it is the surest, the only safety.

II. And should it be asked, WHY HAS IT THIS PRIORITY IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM, we answer, it may well occupy this place of precedency in the scheme of man's salvation, for various reasons.

1. Man's history required it. Unbelief, the opposite of faith, had the primary place in man's fall and perdition.

2. It occupies the first place, again, from the nature, respectively, of God and man. He, as the Infinite and Omniscient, knows much which man, as the finite being of limited faculties and existence, can know only through His Divine testimony.

3. Again, God's unutterable tenderness and goodness have assigned to faith this post of precedency. The babe, yet but a prattler, may have full trust in the parent who cherishes it. Before it can reason, or even speak, it may believe in its father and mother.

4. And man's besetting sin — the pride which, after all the deep descent of the Fall, clings so persistently to him, however degraded, made it fitting, that the mode of his acceptance before God should be one that allowed no occasion for boasting.

III. BUT WILL NOT A SCHEME OF SALVATION, THUS FREE AND INDISCRIMINATE, BREAK DOWN ALL VIRTUE, AND "THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE," and abolish law, and holiness, and truth? So, in all ages, objectors have argued. But the providence of God, and the history of the churches, have sufficiently answered these cavillings. The faith that justifies is implanted by a transforming Spirit, and reconciles to a holy and sin-hating Father, and unites to a Redeemer detesting and destroying iniquity. Whilst faith then accepts pardon as God's free gift, it accepts as the inseparable concomitants of that pardon, penitence for sin, gratitude to the Giver, ingenuous love, adoption into the household of God, and assimilation to the Elder Brother — the Head of that household.

IV. FROM THE NECESSITY OF ITS NATURE THE IMPLANTED FAITH BECOMES A ROOT OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH, AND A PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. In its earlier stages faith is generally but feeble. That it should remain so, is not the will of Him who implants and who sustains it.

1. From the nature of faith, and of the human mind itself, faith, where well placed, on a trustworthy object, must grow and strengthen by exercise and continual repetition.

2. The growth set before our faith appears, again, from the character and structure of Scripture, the volume on whose testimonies faith fastens, and in whose rich pastures she must ever feed. God might have made it a book to be exhausted at one reading; or a record of the past, unavailing to the men of the present; or a mysterious outline of the future, of little clearness or usefulness till the times of its fulfilment had come. Instead of this, it is a book of all times, full of the ancient past, and the busy present, and the dread or gorgeous future. It has the simplest teachings interwoven inextricably with its most fathomless mysteries. Now, when faith is presented with such a manual, not to be mastered in weeks or years, but still evolving new lights to the latest studies of the longest lifetime, does not the structure of the book proclaim the intent of God, that faith should not sit down content with present attainments, and its as yet immature strength?

3. And so, too, the character of God Himself proclaims the same great law of the constant growth of faith. "Acquaint thyself with Him and be at peace," is the demand of reason, no less than Scripture. Man has capacities and aspirations that the earthly, the perishable, the finite, and the sinful can never satisfy.

4. The office and character of the Holy Ghost, the Author of faith, point to the same results. The Saviour Himself described the influence of this Spirit's indwelling "as a well of water" in the disciple "springing up into everlasting life."

(W. R. Williams.)

Faith

Thos. Adams.

I. ITS NECESSITY.

1. Our apostle, to build the house of Christianity, lays this as the foundation. Philosophy lays her ground in reason, divinity in faith; the first voice of a Christian is, "I believe."

2. The necessity of faith appears —(1) In respect of God (Hebrews 11:6; Romans 10:14; Matthew 8:13).(2) In respect of the devil (1 Peter 5:9). He is too strong for thee if thou meetest him with thy virtue, or with thy good works; for he will object sins enough to outweigh them. Solon cannot meet him with his justice, nor Solomon with his wisdom; every poor sinner can overcome him with his faith (Ephesians 6:16).(3) In respect of thyself.(a) Thou art ignorant. There is no understanding of God but by faith.(b) Thou art originally corrupt, naturally hateful to God; nothing canst thou do to please Him, till thyself be first made acceptable to Him. The doer is not acceptable for the deed, but the deed for the doer. Hadst thou all the succeeding graces, and not this foundation of faith, whereby thy person is made accepted in the Beloved, when thou art judged, thou couldst not be saved.

II. ITS SINGULARITY. Not faiths, but faith (Ephesians 4:5). There is but one faith in the church, as but one church in the faith; one faith in nature, not one in number. Every man hath his own faith, yet all have but one faith.

III. ITS PROPRIETY.

1. "Your faith," because you have a right and interest to this faith. Divers gifts are appropriated to divers men; but faith is general to all the elect.

2. "Your faith," because every one must have a proper and peculiar use of faith. Thou canst not see Christ with another's eyes, nor walk to heaven on another's feet.

IV. ITS SOCIETY. "To your faith"; "to" implies some accession. Faith is a great queen; it is base to let her go without a court and a train.

(Thos. Adams.)

Virtue

Faith and virtue

D. J. Hamer.

Isaac Taylor has told us we may find an illustration of this apostolic injunction by taking a view at large of church history. If we do so we shall "discern beneath the scientific phraseology of the passage, a condensed but comprehensive caution against each of those prominent corruptions that have developed themselves in the course of eighteen centuries. They are readily enumerated, and may be put somehow in this fashion."

1. Pusillanimous or inert faith.

2. The licentious abuse of the gospel.

3. A fanatical or haughty subjugation of animal desires.

4. Anehoretic pietism.

5. Sectarian or factious sociality.Thus our apostolic canon is seen to hold up as in a mirror the history of the degenerate Christianity of all ages." Now let us think of faith and manly energy combined. It would be better to inquire at this point, what is the New Testament conception of "virtue"? We have to thank the gospel of Christ for the force of the meaning which we at present attach to the word. You are familiar with the history and some of the literature of the great heathen nations the Greeks and the Romans. You know what "virtue" meant with them. Patriotism, first and chiefly; willingness to endure all, to give up all for the safety or benefit of their country; fearlessness of danger; implacability of hatred of the enemy; scorn of physical suffering; insensibility to the common sympathies of men; the cultivation of a brave war-spirit; this was courage, manliness, "virtue," in those days. We have, as I said, to thank the gospel that the meaning of the word has changed, that we understand true manliness to consist in the full and free development of all that is good in human nature; the cultivation of some of those tenderer emotions which were so haughtily scorned; the recognition of the fact that, in quiet, unanswering submission, there may be majesty of soul as true or truer than is evident in the man who does battle with fortune and writhes under her hand; that love, mercy, forgiveness of injury, are not tokens of an effeminate heart, but of manliness; that a man is most victorious when he conquers himself, and most free when he yields ready, grateful obedience to the will of God. The manliest man must be the Christian; and what strikes us chiefly in thinking of the great names of pagan history, men of the type of Aristides, of Pericles, of Socrates, of Decius, of Brutus, is that it was the inspiration of this truth that they lacked for their perfection. This manly energy, then, is to be cultivated, conjoined, mixed up with that faith in the promises of God which is the only true basis upon which spiritual character can be built. Now, such a command would not have been given if the apostle had not foreseen that the tendency of human nature would be to divorce these two things, as either incompatible with each other, or, at all events, as not necessarily connected. Some of you have not lived beyond the remembrance of your first Christian experience. What effect was produced upon you by the vivid consciousness that you stood cleared from sin in the presence of a merciful Father; that eternal life was yours, that all the promises of the rich heavenly inheritance were yours? Was not the effect that your inclination was just to sit still, and ponder thankfully the marvellous grace of God, in revealing such blessing, in assuring to you such a glorious future? Such a desire for quiet contemplative enjoyment of this new experience tilled yon, that you regarded with distaste anything which threatened to break in upon it. Now you see the wisdom of it all. Now you see the necessity of the apparent harshness of some of that life. As some one has said of the early Christians, "they were daily brought upon a path of danger which made them such men of action, of promptitude, and of courage, as they were men of meditation; while, more than any others, they lived in correspondence with things 'unseen and eternal,' more than any others also they wrestled with things earthly, being embarrassed amid common cares, exhausted by hunger, thirst, and toil, distracted by fears, and often actually engaged in encountering the anguish of cruel deaths. Thus they were compelled, by the very position they occupied, to 'mingle with their faith, virtue.' "Such has been, in varying fashion, the course of God's providence with all of us. Our nature is such that the active and the passive emotions must both have play, or the man is not proportionate in his development — the man is not manly. It is no small evidence of the Divinity of Christianity that such a precept as this is found as part of its ordinance, showing that the religion is adapted for the man by a wisdom above his own. Faith cannot thrive without some expression in action. Faith without activity ends in superstition. Now, just glance at the other side of the truth. There must be this Christian manliness evident and active, but it must have faith as its basis, as its very life. While language helps thought, language without thought would be nothing. Activity without faith leads to infidelity, utter and complete atheism.

(D. J. Hamer.)

I. Consider, first, WHAT THIS VIRTUE IS. No better suggestion has been made than that which takes it as meaning a certain manly energy, vigour, and firmness of disposition, which is the first outcome of Christian faith, and may well be the first aim of Christian effort. Now that strength of nature, firm tenacity of character, will at bottom be neither more nor less than a good strong will; for a man's strength is the strength of his will. And that being understood, what are the shapes in which this manly energy will manifest itself? There should flow from faith a tenacious vigour which masters circumstances and does not let them work with us as they please. True, the ship can only be carried by the wind and the currents, but, equally true, if there be a good strong hand on the tiller, and the canvas be wisely set, she can sail almost in the wind's eye. Circumstances do make us, but it depends on us what they make us. Though they supply the force, the guidance ties in the hand that holds the reins and pulls the bit. The strength of the Christian man will manifest itself in ruling outward things, and making them subservient, whether they be sorrowful or joyful, to the highest end of all, even his larger possession of a fuller Divine nature. And, in like manner, the "virtue" of my text will manifest itself in the rigid subjugation, by the energy of a strong will, of all my own inclinations, desires, tastes, passions, and the like; which all seek to assert themselves, and which the more mightily and ungoverned they work, the weaker a man is. In like manner, this manly energy, which all Christians are bade in the very first place to cultivate, will teach us independence of other people. Learn not to live upon their smiles, dare to be voices and not echoes, and to take your commandments, not from the habits of your class or of your calling, but from the lips which alone have power to command, and whose approval is praise indeed. Let me remind you that the gentle Christ is the pattern of this manly force as of everything else. All that the world adores as power looks weak, hysterical, strained by the side of the calm gentleness of that life which bears no trace of effort, and yet is mightier than all besides. He is Power, because He is Love.

II. And now observe THE ROOT OF THIS VIRTUE, OR ENERGY, IN FAITH. A faith which does not grow into virtue and knowledge, and all the other links in this chain is, if not dead, at least ready to perish if it has not vitality enough to fruit. And then need I say that the exercise of confidence in God, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, has a direct tendency to produce this strong form of character of which my text speaks? Faith as the realisation of the Unseen will bring strength.

III. And now a word as to THE CULTURE OF THIS "VIRTUE" BY OUR OWN EFFORT. The original word is very graphic and picturesque. It means, "Bringing in by the side of," when fully and clumsily and yet accurately translated. "Bringing in your diligence by the side of" — what? By the side of that, "partakers of the Divine nature." God's gift does not make my effort unneccssary, but rather demands it as its completion and consequence. The best way by which we can give diligence to make ourselves strong, is by nurturing the faith which strengthens. Get into the habit of thinking about Jesus Christ all through your days, get into the habit of bringing mind and heart and will under the dominion of the principles of the gospel, and you will find the strength flowing into you and you will be mighty by Him. And we can get this strength in larger measure, too, by the simple process of habitually acting as if we possessed it. That is to say, you may cultivate the habit of suppressing yourselves, of stopping your ears to men's voices, of mastering and coercing circumstances. The Will gets dominion by asserting its dominion. There are no better ways of evolving this strenuous vigour from faith than these two — First, live near the source of it — "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." And then, exercise the little that you have got, and it will grow by exercise.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

U. R. Thomas.

I. THE MEANING OF THE WORD. II. THE DESCRIPTION OF THIS CHARACTERISTIC AS BELONGING TO A CHRISTIAN.

1. What a Christian ought to be. Not feeble, vacillating, pusillanimous; but brave, strong, trustworthy.

2. How a Christian ought to endure.

3. How a Christian ought to resist.

III. THE NEED FOR THIS CHARACTERISTIC. There is no high goodness without strength.

IV. THE WAY TO THE ATTAINMENT OF VIRTUE.

1. A deep conviction of its necessity.

2. Fellowship with heroes who have embodied it.

3. Communion with its great source.

4. Exercise of as much of it as we possess.

(U. R. Thomas.)

In common speech every moral excellence is called a virtue. We also give the name "virtue" to that outward conformity to the law of God which constitutes a good moral character. Thus honesty is a virtue; veracity is a virtue; chastity is a virtue, etc. It is evident, however, that the text does not use the word in either of these significations. It cannot intend by virtue moral excellence in general, since it goes on to enumerate several particular moral excellences, such as temperance, patience, godliness, and charity, which must be added to virtue in order to complete the Christian character. It cannot intend any one in particular of those moral traits which we sometimes call virtues, since in addition to virtue it specifies most of these by name. For the meaning of the apostle we must go back to the primary idea of virtue — which is, manhood, manly vigour, a courageous tone of mind. The old martial Romans, from whom our word virtue is directly inherited, used this term to denote primarily the sum of all corporeal or mental excellences in their ideal of a man. The use of virtue in the sense of power or energy is common in old English; and there are some traces of this elsewhere in our version of the Scriptures, which help to determine the meaning of virtue in the text. The Greek word here translated virtue occurs but four times in the New Testament. As used by Paul in Philippians 4:8, it has the sense of moral excellence. But as used by Peter with respect both to God and to man, the word clearly denotes force, energy, power. There is another word (δύναμις) whose primary meaning is power, which our translators, following Wiclif, sometimes render by virtue, thus showing that they attached to virtue the old Latin sense of energy or force (Luke 8:46; Luke 6:19). Here virtue denotes not moral goodness, but miraculous healing power. Wiclif uses virtues as the equivalent of miracles. Where our version speaks of the "mighty works" done in Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, Wiclif styles these "virtues." Again, "He could there do no mighty work"; Wiclif reads, "He must not do there any virtue (Mark 6:5). Milton applies the phrase celestial virtues to the fallen powers and dominions" of heaven, risingMore glorious and more dread than from no fall.Here the word "virtues" conveys no idea of moral excellences, but is the equivalent of potentates. It is obvious, then, that in old English and in the first English version of the Bible the word virtue had its primitive Latin sense of manliness, a vigorous or energetic spirit, and that it sometimes retains this meaning in our version and also in good poetry. This is the meaning which most fitly renders the original term in the text. It is almost impossible to express this idea of virtue by any one English synonym. Isaac Taylor paraphrases it as "manly energy, or the constancy and courage of manly vigour." The one word which comes nearest to it, while it has the abundant sanction of good English writers, is hardly domesticated in the pulpit; yet both the word and the thing were strikingly expressed by an honoured foreign missionary, when urging upon the American Board the immediate and thorough occupation of Turkey, with men and means for the service of Christ. Said Dr. Schauffler, "After all the discouragements and disasters of the Crimean campaign, official mismanagement, army jealousies, camp sickness, and the discomforts of winter, the soldiers held on and took Sevastopol, not by science but by pluck" — and what we need is Christian pluck to take possession of Turkey in the name of Christ. This is the virtue which all Christians are expected at all times to cultivate. "Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. The apostle speaks to those whom he fully recognises as one with himself in Christ. The faith that bringeth salvation is already theirs. But they are not to rest in that faith as the whole of the Christian character and life. Add to your faith, virtue; as followers of Christ cultivate a true Christian manhood.

I.Is WHAT THIS MANHOOD CONSISTS.

II.ITS PLACE IN A COMPLETE CHARACTER.

III.How IT MAY BE ATTAINED AND CULTIVATED.

1. The virtue of which the apostle speaks — boldness, vigour, courage, manhood — is not to be confounded with rashness. In his earlier experience as a disciple, Peter was sadly deficient in the very virtue which he here recommends, though he was by no means wanting in a rough physical vigour, and the courage which that inspires.

2. This manly virtue should not be confounded with wilfulness. Stubbornness of will is not strength of character. It is doggedness or mulishness, not manliness. If wilfulness were a virtue, then Pharaoh was the most virtuous of men. A resolute, unfaltering purpose to do right, a will to honour God and to stand by truth and duty, a will which cannot be broken upon the wheel, nor relaxed by the fires of martyrdom, but like steel grows more firm and inflexible under pressure and heat — such a will is, indeed, a manly virtue. But will-worship," the magnifying of self-will, adherence to a position or course, not because it is known and felt to be right, but because it has been taken, and pride forbids to change — this wiifulness is as far from Christian manliness as a spoiled child is from an angel.

3. But the virtue of which we speak, while it is neither rash nor wilful, is always bold, firm, and determined in maintaining truth and performing duty: it is a manly and energetic tone of mind.(1) An obvious constituent of this state of mind is an intelligent conviction of truth and duty. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." Steadfastness in purpose is impossible where the mind is doubtful as to the object in view. A purpose springing from mere feeling is apt to prove unstable, since feeling is a variable quantity. Manly resolve rests upon intelligent conviction. Strength of conviction gives courage to resolution.(2) But in order to this manly virtue, the principle of obedience to God must be established in the soul as final, above all personal interests, above all earthly goods, above all merely human custom or law, above whatever would obtrude itself between the personal soul and a personal God, its Creator, Ruler, and Judge. You cannot cower down a soul that rests implicitly on God. When Luther stood before that court of the German empire which held his life in its hands, it is said that he was the only person in the assembly who was perfectly undisturbed. Luther was ready to die fox" the doctrine of justification by faith, since he himself had added to faith — virtue, a manly courage, a holy energy of soul — proceeding from an intelligent and principled obedience to God.(3) One other constituent enters into this manly virtue — that is, frankness or sincerity in avowing one's convictions of truth and duty. He who would be manly must be open. Frankness is not forwardness; it does not require that one should be always thinking aloud; neither is it bluntness; but it does forbid one from a selfish motive, to conceal his convictions when truth and duty are in question. When the Jewish Sanhedrin threatened Peter and John, and forbade them to speak or teach in the name of Jesus, the apostles fell back upon conscience and the law of Christian obedience, and said, "Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken to you more them to God, judge ye; for we cannot but speak the things which we hi, ye seen and heard." That was Christian manliness. Peter had now learned to add to his faith, virtue.

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS VIRTUE TO COMPLETENESS OF CHARACTER IS EVIDENT WITHOUT ARGUMENT. There call be no sterling character without this. The annals of Christian martyrdom often exhibit this manly virtue grafted upon child-like faith.

II. How SHALL THIS VIRTUE BE ATTAINED?

1. Study the examples of those who have manifested virtue. Look at Noah, standing up against the cavils of an apostate world to do the command of God a preacher of righteousness. Look at Abraham, with firm tread walking trackless wastes to Unknown lands, his courage rooted in faith. Look at Moses confronting the stubborn will of Pharaoh. Look at Paul, ready to face a Jewish mob, or the prejudiced Sanhedrin, or pagan governors and Roman captains, or the wild beasts at Ephesus, or the dungeon at Rome, and to stand in Caesar's palace as a witness for Christ.

2. To attain the full vigour of Christian manliness, you must exercise this virtue whenever you have opportunity. Virtues will not come to serve us upon great occasions unless they are trained and developed day by day. The young Christian should begin early to cultivate this holy courage — learn to say "no" to every solicitation of evil; learn to say "yes" to every call of duty.

3. Since virtue rests upon faith, you can strengthen and develop it by increasing faith as a living power in the soul. Much as we may discipline ourselves to virtue, our strength must lie not in ourselves and our purposes, but in God our Saviour. "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength." A living faith secures a manly piety.

(Joseph P. Thompson.)

The term ἀρετὴ, translated virtue in the text, denotes strictly manhood, prowess, manly qualities. Stephanus defines it by "virtus, sed proprie virtus bellica; martial courage or valour. He cites a gloss on Thucydides 1:33; where arete" is expressed by industria, navities, virtus, fortitudo; activity, zeal, manliness, fortitude. Suidas denotes "arete" to be "Constantia et animi vigor"; firmness and strength of mind. Homer applies it to his heroes to denote valour in battle, and other manly qualities. The Mycenaean Feriphetes is said to have been "superior in all kinds of virtues (ἀρετὰς), whether in the race or in the combat (I1. 15:642). Here virtue denotes physical qualities, such as speed, strength, prowess. So the god-like Polydorus" in the agility and valour which he displayed in fight, is said to have exhibited "virtue of feet" or limbs (ποδῶν ἀρετὴν. I1. 20:411). The same term is applied to the "valour" of Meriones (I1. 13:277), and to the "bodily vigour" of Menelaus (Il. 23. 578). This primary sense of ἀρετὴ is strictly expressed by the Latin virtus, from which virtue is derived. This, in its literal sense, is manhood, valour; and is applied to physical courage and to energy of character — vigour of mind in dangers and labours. Cicero speaks of something akin to virtue in animals, as in lions, dogs, and horses; but insists "that virtue of the mind" (animi virtus), being the offspring of reason, is to be preferred to "physical virtue" (corporis virtuti anteponatur. De Finibus 5:13, 38). He also speaks of "the Divine force and virtue of the orator." Here virtus is a pleonasm, reiterating the idea of vis.

(Joseph P. Thompson.)

Goodness is true manliness

I. WHAT IS VIRTUE?

II. As early as the days of apostles there were in the Christian Church THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE FAITH SUFFICE WITHOUT VIRTUE. Some really loving and practising piety, have yet, in their crude theories, discredited morality and virtue, for the purpose of extolling, as they supposed, religion.

III. BUT THERE IS ANOTHER CLASS WHO PROCLAIM THE SUPERIORITY OF VIRTUE TO FAITH, and the sufficiency before God and man, for this life and the next, of virtue without faith. But if virtue be but the small portion of man's duties that he owes in this life to his fellow-mortals, and man be formed for another life as well as this, and have a God as well as human society to regard and propitiate, it seems impossible on any rational principle to establish it that the discharge of this small portion of his obligations shall be accepted in full for his neglect of yet higher duties to a yet higher Being. And if, in matters of human courtesy and friendship even, you are wont to look at the motive as determining the worth or worthlessness of the service rendered, does it not seem necessary even to the claim of true virtue for these social and human duties, that the man discharging them do it from right motives, from the true love of man and the paramount love and fear of Almighty God? From mere vain craving after honour and praise, men may discharge the duties. But are such duties, so prompted by lower motives, genuine virtue? Again, take a few of the more eminent of those whose virtues are thus held up as surpassing the fruits of Christian faith. Take Hobbes, the philosophical oracle of the court of the last Stuarts. Take Hume, whom his friend, Adam Smith, pronounced among the most faultless of human characters; or in later times Bentham. And after a close analysis of the lives and influence of these men, do you not find the inquiry of the apostle remaining still in full force, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ? "Was the morality of any of these men superior to the average morality of their times? Did virtue do in them what faith achieves in the Christian — overcome the world? Again, did it tend to improve that world, recovering its degraded, and uplifting its oppressed classes? Go out as missionaries of the new lights of philosophy without Christianity; and who of you would hope to see the new creed, like the faith of the New Testament, teaching the barbarian, taming the cannibal, making freedom possible, and law and duty sovereign over the nations?

IV. BUT TURN TO DWELL RATHER UPON THE UNION THAT SCRIPTURE MAKES BETWEEN THE TWO PRINCIPLES, which we have seen isolated and divorced, requiring as those Scriptures do, the man of faith to become the pattern of virtue, abounding in every good word and work. The problem is not to guide the sinless, but to recover the sinful. How can you efface the brand of sin on their souls? Morality has not the atoning calvary. It cannot call down on its pentecostal aspirations the rushing fires of the Holy Ghost. The virtue that would be thus recuperative on the masses must be preceded by a faith, with which shall go the regenerating power of God, and for which shall have been first provided the great remedial and reconciliatory process of the redemption. Let the Pharisee or the Sadducee go with another doctrine than that of faith to Zaccheus, would they have won his fourfold restitution of aught wrongly gained? The God that shall answer by fire, He is God. Faith can produce virtue. Look again at the way in which she instructs virtue. Read the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, or take the same apostle's discourse of charity and its fruits, in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthian Church. Saw you ever such full, and brilliant, and unmatched portraitures of virtue as this? But beside these preceptive instructions, remember that all the doctrines and mysteries that faith receives have their practical lessons. The fall, and original sin, how they teach humility and dependence on God — the first lessons of moral progress. The incarnation and redemption — is that a mere logomachy? On the contrary, see in it a great scheme for the subdual of sin, and the implantation of hope, and love, and gratitude. But must faith produce always virtue? It must, or it is not genuine. The inseparable accompaniment of true faith in Scripture is repentance; and what is repentance but the practical and the outward and inward renunciation of sin?

(W. R. Williams.)

Of Christian fortitude

J. Abernethy, M. A.

I. First, let us consider THAT WHICH MUST ACCOMPANY OUR WHOLE DUTY, THE MANNER OF PERFORMING IT, OR APPLYING OURSELVES TO IT, "GIVING ALL DILIGENCE." It is not to be confined to one point, but runs through the whole detail of the Christian graces which is here given. We should summon all the powers of our souls continually to attend this very thing, and watch every occasion of doing and of receiving good. The necessity of this will appear if we reflect on the constitution of human nature, and the Divine wisdom and condescension in accommodating to it the way of conferring the greatest blessings upon us. The blessed Author of our beings has a regard to their frame while He carries on His merciful designs towards us. He does not deal by us as unintelligent machines, but rational creatures. He does not make us happy without our own knowledge, choice and concurrence. I will add but one observation more on this subject, that religious industry will produce constancy, as its natural effect. Whatever obligations we are under to diligence in our duty at any time do equally bind us at every time; and there can be no sure evidence of our sincerity without a persevering steadfastness in the work of the Lord.

II. I now come to THE FIRST PARTICULAR WHICH THE APOSTLE EXHORTS US TO ADD TO OUR FAITH, AND IT IS VIRTUE. This virtue carries in it the idea of hazards and difficulties, and the excellence of it consists in a magnanimous superiority to all dangers and all opposition. As it is peculiar to a probationary state, or a state of discipline, like ours, it is that without which there can be no real goodness, at least no steadfastness in such a state. The "flesh lusteth against the spirit"; our senses and inferior appetites always minister the occasion of evil. Now, these must be resisted by a Christian. Here, then, is another occasion for the exercise of Christian fortitude, which may in some cases require all our strength. How difficult must it be to stand unmoved against a train of sufferings in our outward estate. And how much invisible wicked agents may contribute to the difficulties and trials of the Christian life, who can certainly say? Having thus shown you the proper object of Christian fortitude, or the occasion of its exercise, I will next consider the exercises and dispositions of mind which are necessary to it, or do concur in it. And let us, first of all, observe that it is very different from a blind passion. Nothing is more necessary in the whole of our religion than that we be sedate and deliberate; and particularly that our zealous resolutions for God be formed upon a just and solid ground of calm and mature consideration. Secondly, having proceeded so far, the next thing necessary is steadfast resolution. It is of consequence to us that we hold on in a religious way, that we endure to the end. Then certainly we should fortify our minds against temptation by firm purposes; we shall find the firmest we can enter into weak enough. Thirdly, the virtue which the apostle here exhorts us to add to our faith imports bearing trials, uneasiness and fatigues with equanimity. A Christian has the same sense of pleasure, profit, and honour with other men: and yet he bravely denies them. He has the same feeling of pain, and yet is not moved by it to forsake his duty; and herein he acts reasonably, for the tendency of such disagreeable sensations is overruled by superior motives; he sees such an excellence in religion, finds such an inward peace and comfort in his integrity, has such a solid joy in the prospect of a future glorious reward, as is sufficient to bear him up under all his present uneasiness. Here, then, is the exercise of religious fortitude.

(J. Abernethy, M. A.)

Christian fortitude

J. Evans.

I. I am to EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THIS GRACE OF CHRISTIAN COURAGE OR FORTITUDE. Courage, in general, is a temper which disposes a man to do brave and commendable actions, without being daunted at the appearance of dangers and difficulties in the way.

1. For what it is to be exercised. It is courage in Christ's cause; that is, in maintaining the profession of the Christian faith, and adhering to the practice of our duty.

2. Against what Christian courage is to be exercised. It supposes oppositions, trials and dangers in our way, else there would be no occasion for it. It is a temper for which there will be no room in heaven.(1) The power, the subtilty, and activity of the powers of darkness call for courage in a Christian.(2) The oppositions from within ourselves require courage.(3) The several discouragements or dangers we may meet with from other men, in the way of our duty, and even for our duty, make courage necessary.

3. Wherein or in what acts and instances it should express itself.(1) In deliberate and vigorous resolutions for God and our duty, upon counting the cost.(2) In the suppression of distracting fear of evils at a distance.(3) In a vigorous application to our Christian work, notwithstanding the stated and constant difficulties and oppositions attending it.(4) In a readiness to undertake hard and difficult services when God calls to them.(5) In a uniform steadiness of conduct under all the trials we actually meet with.

II. WHAT MAY BE INTENDED IN THE EXHORTATION TO ADD VIRTUE, OR COURAGE, TO OUR FAITH. When we are called to make this addition we are only required to build the most proper and natural structure upon our most holy faith. The fortitude required by the gospel is distinguished from all other fortitude, not only as it is upon account of the truths and duties of Christianity, but as it is founded upon Christian principles. Christian faith is most fit to inspire with Christian fortitude.

1. Faith discovers Divine providence as engaged for us and with us in all our difficulties.

2. Faith proposes the Divine Spirit as directly provided to help our infirmities. Particularly for this very purpose, to inspire us with needful courage.

3. Faith represents our main enemies as already vanquished, and as having their chief power broken.

4. Faith gives us particular assurance that our trials shall not exceed our strength; either the strength we have, or that which shall be imparted (1 Corinthians 10:13).

5. Faith sets in view greater evils to be feared from our cowardice than can be feared from our adherence to God.

6. Faith assures us of the certain and glorious success of our courage. That our endeavours against our powerful enemies shall issue in a full conquest (Romans 16:20.)

7. Faith represents to us the noblest examples of such holy fortitude upon the same principle.Lessons:

1. Consider this grace of fortitude as a matter of the utmost importance in the Christian life. The variety of oppositions and difficulties in our way make it necessary.

2. Cultivate therefore your faith, in order to the forming of your minds to holy fortitude.

3. Use all farther additional means to fortify your minds. Be prepared for the worst, by counting frequently the cost. Make clear the goodness of your cause, for which you may be called to exert your courage. Carefully exercise good conscience: without this the best cause in profession will be very faintly maintained in an evil day.

(J. Evans.)

Courage

M. G. Pearse.

Whatever the Christian was in the early days, he could not well be a coward, He could not live in any fear as to what people would say about him: there was no doubt about that. And he could not live with a miserable counting of the loss or gain that religion should bring him. He knew full well that it would mean abuse, loss, danger, perhaps death. So in the old time Christianity first demanded faith that took hold of the promises- and then demanded courage that held on to them at any risk though earth and hell raged furiously. To-day religion is not so much a battlefield as it is a hospital for sick and disabled folks; it is very often only a round of poultices and plasters and nourishing diet, where the talk is of troubles and trials and what we have to go through. Look at fire company in which this valour is found. "Add to your faith valour." St. Peter is writing to those who have obtained like precious faith in the Saviour. But it is not good for Faith to be alone; to live in luxurious ease; hers is a high and sacred calling. So is it that at her right hand must stand the tall and stalwart captain of her guard, Courage, my Lord Courage, strong in action, resolute in danger, fearless always. And at her left is her Prime Minister, and councillor, old Knowledge, with lofty brow, and ready understanding of the times and its requirements, and skilful in devices for meeting them. Then comes the Comptroller of the Household, a goodly gentlemen of clear eye and of fair complexion, my Lord Temperance. Then cometh the Lady-in-Waiting, Patience, fair Patience, whose cheery song keepeth the palace bright in troublous times. "Bear bravely," Patience sings, "it is all well that cometh down from Him; and it is ever well for them that journey up to Him." Then cometh the Queen's chaplain, Godliness, who moveth amidst the rest having a deep and holy sense of God's claim, a steadfast eye to His commandments, a lofty sense of His greatness, and a glad obedience to His will. Then come the two almoners who dispense the Queen's bounty — Brotherly Kindness and Charity. Thus only is Faith secure, and thus only can she rightly discharge all her duties and claim all her honours, when she is attended by each of these.

I. THAT CHRIST'S RELIGION ASKS FOR COURAGE SHOULD GIVE IT A STRONGER CLAIM UPON US. I ask you to-day to come and pledge yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, because it does need courage.

II. WITH MANY IS IT NOT JUST THIS ONE THING — THE LACK OF COURAGE — WHICH IS THE UNDOING OF THE LIFE? Some want courage to decide for Christ.

III. IN THESE BUSY TIMES MANY A MAN WANTS COURAGE TO DEAL WITH CIRCUMSTANCES THAT HINDER HIM. "Well:" says somebody, indignantly, "must I sacrifice my business? "Yes; or anything else, if you can dare to call it a sacrifice, seeing what infinite gain is at stake.

IV. OTHERS NEED COURAGE TO DEAL WITH DAMAGING INFLUENCES ABOUT THEM. There is some companion, or some pursuit, or some pleasure that takes away all the heart and appetite for the service of the Lord Jesus. It leaves you like a garden in winter — nipped, withered, dead, without bud or bloom or beauty. There are things that make prayer such hard work that it seems impossible, and the Bible is a weariness, and the service of God is a dreary restraint. Resolve by God's help to have done with them bravely for the sake of the King, and for the sake of your own true life.

V. THERE ARE OTHERS STILL WHO NEED COURAGE TO DEAL RESOLUTELY WITH BESETTING SINS. Your only hope is to add to your faith courage — to have no terms with the enemy. You must perish or your foe; the two cannot live together.

(M. G. Pearse.)

Christian courage

W. E. Griffis, D. D.

It is not physical courage, the courage of the brute, the courage of the man without nerves; it is the courage of the man who has moral sense developed and spiritual ideas strong. I suppose you have heard the story of the Duke of Wellington, who, seeing in the thin red line which shines in Britain's glorious story a man trembling in battle but who would not retreat, said: "There is a brave man; he knows his danger, and he faces it." Another story is that two men were once standing together in battle, one strong with accumulated flesh and blood, phlegmatic, not knowing what fear was, and the other thin and pale and nervous; and as he trembled so much that his spirited horse trembled also, his phlegmatic companion turned to him and said: "Humph! afraid, are you?" "Yes," said he, "if you were as much afraid as I am you would rum" And so sometimes in the Christian life apparently the weakest one is called to bear the heaviest strokes of Providence. He staggers under his affliction even as Jesus, pale and weak and trembling, staggered beneath the Cross. So we are not called to physical courage — that is good enough in its way — but to moral courage.

(W. E. Griffis, D. D.)

Canon Teignmouth Shore.

There is nothing really brave, really manly, really womanly, on earth, unless it is also good. To be good and to do good — that alone is manly. There are two Latin words for man. The one — homo — means merely a man as an animal distinguished from a dog or a horse. But the other word — vir — means a man in the best and truest sense; and that gives us our word "virtue," Never forget, virtue and manliness are one.

(Canon Teignmouth Shore.)

Knowledge

I. WHAT EXACTLY IS MEANT BY THIS SECOND LINK OF OUR CHAIN. What is meant here is a practical insight into what Christian people ought to do, not only in general, but at each moment in accordance with the circumstances and demands of the instant. The more we can rule our lives by the intelligent application of principles, and not by mere use and wont, instinct, imitation, mechanism, necessity, the more we shall be the men and women that God meant us to be. But Peter does not stop with such a mere toothless generality as that; for everything depends on what the law is which we apply to conduct. So this knowledge is not only of what it is right and wise to do at the moment; but it is knowledge of what it is right and wise, on Christian ground, to do at the moment and in the circumstances. Let the perception of duty be a perception illuminated and determined by the principles of the gospel, and bring that law to bear upon all life. Such a continual reference of daily exigencies and circumstances to the great principles that lie in Christ and His revelation will take the place of that selfish and secular tact and instinct which the world prizes so highly. It wilt give delicacy to roughness, sympathy to the hard, tact to the clumsy, and will bring a simplicity of motive and a suppression of self which are the best possible precautions for seeing clearly what the will of the Lord is. "Supply in your strength knowledge."

II. THE CONNECTION OF THIS LINK IN THE CHAIN WITH THOSE THAT GO BEFORE. The believing man is the truly sagacious man. The real prudence is got in communion with Jesus Christ. The eye that looks at the sun is blinded, but the eye that looks constantly at God sees all things as they are, and is delivered from the illusions which deceive the rest of mankind. To see all in God and God in all, that is the way to understand the depths of things, and to know what, at each moment, they call upon us to do. What we want to know is not only what circumstances and self-advantage require, but what Christ requires, and that we shall learn when we keep near to Him in faith. In like manner the strength, of which my text has been speaking, naturally produces — when it gets fair play, and when men give themselves honestly to work out all that is in it — it naturally produces this happy certitude and illumination upon the path by which we should walk.

III. THE PRACTICAL DUTIES WHICH COME OUT OF THIS EXHORTATION.

1. First, study, and keep very near the pattern of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more wonderful in that wonderful life than the unconscious facility and certainty with which He did the very act, and said the very word that the moment required.

2. Then, again, I would say try and get a more firm and intelligent grip of the principles of the New Testament as a whole. I believe there is the weakness of much of our modern popular Christianity. You do not read your Bibles half enough.

3. Let me say again what is only a deduction from what I have already said — regard all Christian truth as being meant to influence conduct. We write up in churches the Creed on the one side, and the Ten Commandments on the other. Christ is creed and Christ is commandment.

4. Again, let us see to it conversely, that we bring all the actions of our lives under the grip of our Christian principle. The lawyers say, "De minimis non curat lex. The law does not take care of the very small things." Perhaps it does not; Christ's law does. It stretches out its hand over all life, and the smallest duties are its special sphere.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

"To virtue knowledge

Thos. Adams.

Virtue without knowledge were like a beautiful damsel blind, or a fair house that hath not a window in it. Virtue is like a pearl in the shell; there must be knowledge to break the shell, or we cannot come at the pearl. Ignorance is dangerous. Thus the devil carries many to hell, as falconers carry their hooded hawks, without baiting. There is no wretchedness so pitiable as that which is not known to the sufferer. If men will not know God, God will not know them. The work of regeneration begins at illumination. The first thing that sunk in our first parents was knowledge: now where the wound began, there must begin the medicine. Knowledge is the light of virtue.

1. By knowledge is here meant an insight into heavenly things.

2. This earnest exhortation to knowledge intimates that naturally we want it. The first way to knowledge is to know our own ignorance.

3. Knowledge is not the cause of sin, but ignorance; for virtue is begotten and nourished by knowledge.

4. Seeing we must join with our faith knowledge, it is manifest that an ignorant faith is no faith.

5. This knowledge must be added to virtue also.

(Thos. Adams.)

Knowledge

I. There is in the Church of God, as well as in society generally, A DISPOSITION TO EXALT PRACTICE AT THE EXPENSE OF THEORY; AND YET ALL PRACTICE IS BUT THE EMBODIMENT OF SOME THEORY. There is in some minds a disposition to mock at all science and all patient thought as being but idle and unprofitable speculation. Common sense is lauded at the expense of study and research. The labourer is exalted above the thinker, and the man of experimental activity is pronounced the truly useful, whilst the studious and reflecting is denounced as a thriftless and unprofitable cumberer of the earth. But society and the Christian Church need the thinker as much as they require the labourer. Every seaman is not expected to construct his own nautical tables, or every miner to build his own steam-engine that may uplift the ore or drain off the superfluous waters. Yet without the aid of the astronomer and the machinist, of what avail would be the practical energy of the hardy mariner, or the begrimed miner toiling in his ever dark and narrow gallery? So, in religion, a just, religious practice must grow out of just, religious principles. And although a simple and childlike faith may readily grasp the great outlines of these principles, it requires that faith should be patient and studious, in order that these principles may be fully understood and justly stated, may be seen in their due position, and may be held in their just proportion, and in their mutual dependence and symmetry.

II. Now our text and, in full harmony with it, the entire body of the Divine Scripture, require THAT THE CHRISTIAN PROFIT IN HIS RELIGIOUS COURSE, BY GOING ON FROM FAITH TO VIRTUE, AND FROM VIRTUE TO KNOWLEDGE. The first great necessity of our nature is that we know ourselves, that we learn from the book of God our origin, destiny, and redemption. But to have a just and safe knowledge of ourselves it is needful that we know our God. Framed by Him and for Him we cannot ascertain the moral bearings or calculate, so to speak, the latitude and longitude of our own drifting course over the ocean of life; but, as we refer to Him whose will is the meridian line by which we estimate the position of all beings, and whose favour is the Light and central Sun of our moral life. And knowing ourselves, and knowing our God in Scripture, we are called upon to know this world, that portion of it called Nature which we can reach and survey; and that march of the Divine purposes in the government of the race which we call history; and to know life, or those arts, and occupations, and relations, and human laws, and local customs that are to affect us in the discharge of our duties to our fellows. We are required to know man, not only as he should be, and as in his original innocence he was, but man as he is, in his selfishness, craftiness, and wretchedness, and yet, withal, in the long and tangled train of all his susceptibilities, and his capabilities, and his hopes and his fears, his grovelling desires and his soaring aspirations.

III. THE ORDER OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE AS FOLLOWING AND TENDING TO GUARD AND CROWN FAITH AND VIRTUE. Why should it be set here, and not at an earlier place, in the rank of Christian excellences?

1. We suppose the reason to have been this: it was to remind us of a great truth, that practical obedience or virtue is necessary if we would gain any great advancement in Christian knowledge. Not only is such obedience an evidence of a sound understanding, but it is also a safeguard for it. No man can keep a healthy and sound intellect who is perpetually sporting with known error, and wallowing in known iniquity. The very conscience may become defiled, and the eyes of the soul contract blindness, by disuse and misuse.

2. Virtue was again made to precede knowledge, in order to protect against a great error that began to be promulgated ere the first apostles had quitted the arena of the Church militant for the thrones of the Church triumphant. Gnosticism, or the system of knowledge, claimed in the early Christian Church the highest prerogatives. It sought to plant knowledge, or the teaching of its own wild and foul philosophy, as the very basis of faith. Much of the Rationalism and Pantheism of our own times proceeds on the same most false and most fatal principle. Instead of going out of ourselves to lind, by faith in God's testimonies, what He is and what we ourselves are, and to obtain the recuperative grace that sanctifies the heart and so enlightens the intellect, this system drags the God and the oracle and the revelation into man's self, makes its own purblind reason, and its own hasty and crude utterances, in the natural state of alienation from God and moral blindness, the law of judgment, to God and to His teachings.

3. The gospel does not proscribe knowledge: it requires it. It makes knowledge possible to the savage by awakening aspirations where before were only appetites; and by letting out on every side the horizon of his cribbed and narrow intellect, into the wide eternity and the high infinity around and above him. It not only patronises and diffuses knowledge; it classifies it as humanity unaided cannot do it. See in modern missions the usefulness and glory of consecrated learning in a William Carey and a Henry Martyn, a Morrison and a Judson; and is it not evident that, whatever else the gospel be, it is not the patron or the parasite of ignorance?

4. Physical science in our day has made rapid progress. Religion frowns not on it. But far as physical science claims to be paramount and sufficient and exclusive, it has usurped honours that are not its due. It would, in so doing, treat man as a being of mere bodily organs, without conscience, without a God, and without an eternity; and in so regarding our race it robs and degrades us. Religious knowledge comes in to prevent the degradation and to denounce the usurpation. Religious knowledge comes in to remedy the deficiency, and to right the wrong. Political enfranchisement, or the recovery of the rights of the masses, is another most popular subject of thought and debate. But when was humanity so elevated as when the Creator assumed its likeness in Bethlehem? How is fraternity to be expounded and established, but by bringing men to look on themselves, as being in common amenable to the Last Judgment, and as being also in common interested in the great propitiation? The gospel it is, then, that gives the best knowledge; ascertains the relative rank and worth of all knowledge; popularises, diffuses, and defends it; and above all gives to man, the sufferer, the knowledge of the Consoler; and to man, the sinner, the revelation of the atonement; and to the groping captive of sin and heir of the pit, announces liberty and holiness, citizenship in heaven and sonship with God.

(W. R. Williams.)

Of knowledge

J. Abernethy, M. A.

I. WHAT KIND OF KNOWLEDGE IS THE SUBJECT OF THIS EXHORTATION? Knowledge is an attainment very suitable to a reasonable nature, and is the glory of man because it is the improvement of that faculty which is one of his distinguishing privileges. But there is a great diversity in the kinds of knowledge, which chiefly depends on the quality of the object and the importance of the ends it serves. That knowledge which the text recommends is, according to this rule, the most valuable (Proverbs 9:10.) If we observe the connection of the apostle's discourse, that he has placed knowledge in the middle of the Christian virtues, it will appear plainly enough that he means a right understanding of them, such a knowledge as is necessary to our practising them. We should constantly study to be more and more acquainted with the Christian virtues, to understand the mind and will of God, and be making daily proficiency in the exact knowledge of our duty. We should use our own active endeavours that we may grow in knowledge, for the purposes of usefulness and goodness. Secondly, another thing intended in this exhortation is a disposition to improve knowledge to the proper practical ends of it.

II. THE REASONABLENESS OF OUR ENDEAVOURING TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE, AND MAKE DAILY PROGRESS IN IT. II knowledge be absolutely necessary to our doing our duty acceptably, then all the arguments which press us to the one do also oblige us to the other. First, this is the way to be preserved from snares, of which we are always in danger through temptation and the deceitfulness of sin. Secondly, in proportion to the measure of our knowledge, so is our steadfastness; if it is of a rational kind. Thirdly, this unsteadiness, together with weakness of understanding, which is one cause of it, renders men in a great measure unprofitable to the world and to the Church. There is not anything a Christian should have more at heart than to promote the common edification of the body of Christ. And that this may be effected, adding knowledge to our faith and virtue is the best expedient.

III. SOME DIRECTIONS FOR ATTAINING USEFUL AND SALUTARY KNOWLEDGE.

1. The first is a high esteem of it. If it be pleasant to our souls, if we have a just sense of its excellency, and thus our affections are captivated to it; it is the best preparation of mind we can have for this most important acquisition.

2. Let us use the means of attaining knowledge with great diligence and care. There is no other way to prove our sincerity and our love of wisdom.

3. But it is above all things necessary that we use the means of knowledge, and particularly that we search the Holy Scriptures without prejudice and prepossession.

4. The best means of attaining to religious knowledge, is doing what we know to be the will of God.

(J. Abernethy, M. A.)

Knowledge

— The meaning of the term "knowledge" must be ascertained by a comparison of the text with other passages in which this word occurs. It is of course knowledge with respect to spiritual things and religious duties of which the apostle here speaks. This word is used in the New Testament some thirty times, and with various shades of signification. Sometimes it denotes a supernatural gift, knowledge by immediate inspiration. Perhaps it is in this sense that the "word of knowledge" is classed with the gifts of healing and of tongues, and with other miraculous powers. But since all Christians are exhorted to add knowledge to their faith, the apostle cannot intend a miraculous gift which God only could bestow. And for the same reason he cannot here intend the power or faculty of knowing in which sense the word is used when it is said that "the love of Christ passeth knowledge," i.e., is beyond the natural comprehension of men. We cannot add a new sense or faculty to our natural endowments. Again, the word "knowledge" is used for the object of knowledge, and especially the system of truth made known in the gospel. But this must be known, in a measure, before we can have faith; and the knowledge spoken of in the text comes after faith. Knowledge is used also to denote a general apprehension of religious truth; but, as this is essential to the act of faith in Christ, it could hardly be referred to as a something to be added to faith. Isaac Taylor says this knowledge is "neither human erudition nor general intelligence, but that specific knowledge of which the gospel is the subject." There is another use of the word which applies it to the deep, clear, and cordial perception of truth, followed by the discriminating adaptation of truth to practical ends. Thus the apostle Paul speaks of the Christians at Rome as "full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to admonish one another" (Romans 15:14); i.e., they possessed that discriminating insight into truth which would shed light upon questions of practical duty. Knowledge is a spiritual apperception of Divine things, forming and controlling the practical judgment. A soul informed by such knowledge discerns the way of truth and duty. This knowledge is not the mere perception of the truths of the gospel in their objective form, but an apperception of gospel truths in their inward spiritual relations.

I.WHAT THIS KNOWLEDGE IS.

II.HOW IT MAY BE CULTIVATED.

III.THE EXCELLENCE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE IN ITS EFFECTS.

I. This inward experimental knowledge of Christ and His truth differs from the intellectual perception of truth, just as the feeling that we know the mind and heart of another differs from the knowledge of his person which we gain through the eye; it is the difference between heart knowledge and knowledge merely by perception or intellect[on. Now we may know Christ, and yet may not know Him; may know Him as to His person revealed as Divine; we may know Him as to His character recorded in the four Gospels; we may know Him as to His doctrine and His work; and still we may come far short of really knowing Christ. Such knowledge is objective; i.e., it exists in our thought as an object, and does not bring us into personal sympathy with Christ as our Saviour and Friend. It is in the brain but not in the heart.

2. And here, again, this knowledge differs from faith. Faith is that belief in Christ upon the evidence of the Gospels which leads the soul to rely upon Him as its Saviour, and to commit itself to His service. This faith rests upon a degree of knowledge as its warrant. But having gained this faith, and rested ourselves in it, we are exhorted to add to it knowledge; not the mere knowledge of the doctrine of Christ as a Saviour — for that we have already — but knowledge of Christ Himself, which comes through the heart, proving His doctrine, His promises, His love, in its own blessed experience.

3. But this inward knowledge of Christ has its outward expression in a judgment wisely exercised upon truth and duty. We need to cultivate the judgment as well as to fortify the spirit, to attain to a sound discernment of duty as well as to firmness in duty. It is a proverb that discretion is the better part of valour; a critical judgment as to the time and manner of acting is important to the success of the boldest and bravest action. In his description of the good man the Psalmist happily combines a sound judgment with boldness and firmness as essential qualities of his character. "He will guide his affairs with discretion; surely he shall not be moved for ever. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. His heart is established, he shall not be afraid." Such knowledge is not what men of the world call prudence, which is exercised more in the cautious avoidance of evil to one's self than in devising and executing that which is good. There are two or three words which somewhat approach to this meaning — discernment, discretion, and discrimination; these all in their radical idea mean "to separate," "to distinguish," to "make a difference," especially between the true and the false, the right and the wrong, in theory and in practice. This discrimination as to truths and motives duly exercised by the mind itself, and faithfully applied to our outward conduct, constitutes knowledge as a practical thing.

IV. HOW SHALL THIS KNOWLEDGE BE ATTAINED?

1. By the prayerful study of Christ as He is set before us in the gospel. The mere tourist sauntering through a gallery of art recognises in one painting a work superior to the rest; but the artist lingers before that picture and scans its every point till, without the help of catalogue or cicerone, he discovers it to be a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Murillo, and feasts his soul upon those diviner touches that reveal the master's hand. You must not look only, or read by catalogue or note-book, but must study. Prayer is the life element of such a study.

2. We gain this knowledge by a diligent and teachable seeking after the will of Christ. The spirit of obedience helps to the knowledge of duty. This determination to do the will of Christ is like a signal rocket piercing the gloom of night from a ship on an unknown shore.

3. We gain this knowledge by studying questions of right and duty in the closet. The place for calm, mature judgment is the place of secret prayer.

4. We may gain this knowledge by being willing to learn, and to correct mistakes. The key of knowledge is humility.

5. We may cultivate this knowledge by often testing ourselves by our principles. If we were careful to keep a daily balance-sheet of our actions and principles, we should be more quick to detect errors of judgment, and to increase our stock of practical wisdom. True principle is a fixed quantity. It rests upon the eternal base of truth and justice, and is firm as the pillars of heaven. As the old Egyptians took their astronomical bearings from the sun-line upon the pyramid, so should we take our moral bearings by the light of Christ's teaching and life, giving the meridian line of principle and duty.

V. THE EXCELLENCY OF THIS KNOWLEDGE IN ITS EFFECTS.

1. This knowledge, combined with firmness in faith, gives beauty and dignity to character. We have seen that virtue gives energy, strength, resolve; but a character in which force and earnestness predominate is one-sided; may easily run into extremes.

2. This knowledge gives us power over ourselves. Man was created a power, and not a thing. In proportion as the soul gains a true spiritual power over its inferior desires does it become a power over the world.

3. This knowledge gives us power for good and even great achievements. It is no modern discovery that "knowledge is power."

4. This knowledge of Christ gives us power over evil and over death. It is half the battle to know the enemy, his ground, his resources, and his tactics. Classical usage helps us little as to the meaning of γνῶσις (gnosis) in the New Testament. Plato uses it commonly of "understanding," though sometimes of a deeper philosophical insight. But with the Neo-Platonists, gnosis came to be almost a technical term for higher insight, deeper wisdom, a certain mysterious knowledge reserved to the initiated. In this sense of deep spiritual insight, but without the associations of mysticism or mystery, the word gnosis is often used in the New Testament. It is a term peculiarly liable to abuse by enthusiastic minds, and before the close of the apostolic age there began to appear a sect of Gnostics, who claimed to have "an extraordinary insight into Divine things beyond the system of faith, which the people commonly received on authority." This insight they professed to have gained through certain secret traditions handed down from Christ, the higher light. Their gnosis corresponded to the esoteric doctrines of the old Greek philosophers, mysteries to be communicated only to the initiated. The Epistles of John seemed to have been aimed in part at this Gnostic tendency. The true Christian knowledge is as far as possible both from the obscureness of mysticism and from the pretensions of clairvoyance. The gnosis of the New Testament is the privilege of all Christians alike.

(Joseph P. Thompson.)

Temperance

I. TEMPERANCE IS THE CURB, bringing into subjection all those passions of human nature that tend to voluptuousness, just as patience and meekness check and keep under the fiercer passions or those tending to violence. Christian temperance sets itself in opposition to the drunkard's bowl, and the glutton's banquet, and the revels of the profligate, and the anxious longings of the covetous, and against the immoderate desire of what is net ours, as well as against the undue and immoderate abuse of what is ours. It includes, thus considered, sobriety, and chastity, and moderation — all the varieties of a wise self-discipline, imposed on man's fierce quest of pleasure.

II. LET YOUR KNOWLEDGE, then, said the apostle to the readers of his Epistle, DEFEND ITSELF BY THE COMPANIONSHIP OF TEMPERANCE. Why, it may be asked, should this be selected, and not any other of those clustering graces which go to attest the energy and fruitfulness of the Divine Spirit in the work of his moral renovation? Let it be remembered, then, that in the sin of our first parents, the knowledge which they sought, beyond God and His instructions, was knowledge which brought with it a sin against the holy temperance that had before been the law of Paradise, and the defence of primeval innocence. Was it not then fitting that the victim of the Fall should be perpetually reminded of his need to be on his guard evermore against that dominion of the bodily senses into which the Fall betrayed us? In Satan's school knowledge brought forth intemperance; but it must not be so in Christ's school. Is it not, again, a fact, sustained by the history of the Christian Churches, that even when men enjoy this gospel their knowledge, both in things secular and spiritual, is but too often perverted into a license for casting off the self-control and the serene moderation of Christian principle? Is not a palmy civilisation often found shading a feverish and lawless sensuality? Was it not thus that Solomon — after his wide research, that wrote of plants from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, and in consequence of his growing acquaintance and his large converse with heathen society — became in his old age a doting conformist to the lewd idolatry of Ashtaroth?

III. To glance at THE BEARING OF THIS CHRISTIAN GRACE ON THE TEMPERANCE REFORMATION OF OUR TIMES. But we suppose that the best friends of temperance will yet find that, to give it permanence, it needs the broader basis and the deeper root of a religious movement; and that there, as in so many other earthly reforms, the controlling motives — the effectual lever, must rest on some stronger and firmer basis than earthly considerations. Drunkenness is enough to damn a man; but the mere absence of drunkenness is by no means enough to save him.

IV. THE CLAIMS OF THIS CHRISTIAN GRACE, TAKEN IN THE WIDE AND COMPREHENSIVE SENSE WHICH SCRIPTURE ATTACHES TO IT, UPON THE DISCIPLES OF OUR TIMES.

1. It is necessary to true piety. The knowledge and love of God cannot lodge in a heart crowded and dragged downward by debasing and sinful pleasure. If men are Christ's, they are crucified with Him to the flesh and the world.

2. It is necessary to Christian usefulness. The man who would be really and truly useful must have an unselfish sympathy. Now, of this the lovers of pleasure are notoriously destitute. Few things more rapidly bring a seared callousness over the heart than the habitual pursuit of gross and selfish pleasure.

3. It is necessary to national well-being and prosperity.

(W. R. Williams.)

Of temperance

J. Abernethy, M. A.

I. THE VIRTUE ITSELF, AND WHEREIN IT CONSISTS, WILL BE EASILY UNDERSTOOD BY ANY ONE WHO ATTENDS TO THE PRESENT CONSTITUTION OF HUMAN NATURE, and what our experience will obviously suggest to us. The Author of our being has implanted in us passions which excite us to such action as is useful for our safety; and herein His wisdom and goodness appears, making provision for the continuance, the comfort, and all the purposes of our existence in this world. But, as the highest ends of our being are not confined to the present state, the same wise Creator has endued us with nobler powers and affections, by which we are deter mined to the pursuit of more excellent objects, wherein our true perfection and happiness consists; it is plain these inferior appetites were ordained to be in subjection to reason, and to be gratified within such limits as to be consistent with superior enjoyments, and with the proper exertion of superior powers. To consider this subject a little more particularly —

1. In the first place, it is plain that sobriety or temperance does not require the rooting out or an obstinate refusal to satisfy or comply with the original appetites of nature.

2. But, on the other hand, temperance requires such a regulation and restraint of our desires towards sensible objects, or the pleasure of the external senses, that they shall not possess that room in our esteem which is due to things of vastly greater excellence and value. Temperance not only forbids all excesses, but requires such an habitual moderation that the freedom of the mind may be preserved, its powers in a constant readiness for better exercises, and that it may have a taste for intellectual and moral pleasures. The natural effect of a customary indulgence to carnal desires is a confirmed habit which increases the desire so as it prevails against better inclinations; and then experience shows the truth of what the apostle teaches, "that fleshly lusts war against the soul"; they tend to enervate its powers, impair its liberty, and bring it into bondage.

3. I observe that sobriety, like all other virtues, is seated in the mind. The appetites take their rise from the body, but the regulating them belongs to the higher faculties of the soul. It is in the superiority of the soul in its freedom, and in the dominion of reason and conscience over the lower desires and passions that the virtue chiefly consists.

II. To PROPOSE SOME MOTIVES TO SOBRIETY OR TEMPERANCE. This particular virtue of temperance stands upon the same foot with the rest, and is, like them, recommended by its own native beauty and intrinsic worth, which at first strikes any mind which attends to it. It is impossible for any one, upon a deliberate comparison, not to acknowledge in his heart that the sober man is more excellent than his neighbour who is intemperate; that it is a more lovely character and more worthy of the human nature to have the rule over one's own spirit. Besides, intemperance naturally tends to make life not only mean and contemptible, but miserable. But I intended principally to insist on these considerations which are contained in the gospel. It deserves the serious attention of Christians that the blessed Author of our religion Himself, and His apostles after Him, very earnestly inculcate this virtue. Let it never enter into our thoughts that great professions of respect or pretended faith will please Jesus Christ if we continue in carnal impurity and live after the flesh. But there are two arguments Which you will find often urged in the new Testament: one is taken from the circumstances of our present state compared with the future. The second is, that temperance is an excellent preservative from snares and temptations.

(J. Abernethy, M. A.)

Self-government

One of the old Italian masters has left us his conception of temperance on the walls of a little chapel, where he has painted a heroic female figure with a bridle upon her lips, and her right hand binding the hilt of a sheathed sword to its scabbard. And that conveys in symbol and emblem an idea of a self-command that restrains the utterance of emotion and sheathes the sword of passion.

I. THIS SELF-COMMAND IS A UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED NECESSITY. A man has only to look at himself to see that he is so made as that bits of him are meant to be governed, and bits of him are meant to govern; that there are some parts of his nature which are intended to be kept down under hatches, and some that are meant to be on the quarter-deck, with the helm in their hands. We have only to look, for instance, at the way in which the necessities and the appetites which belong to our bodily organisation work, to see that they were never meant to have the mastery, or to be left to operate as they please. A man is hungry, thirsty, feels the sting of some perfectly innocent, legitimate, fleshly need, and that appetite is as blind as a bat to all other considerations except its own gratification. No matter what lies between it and its object, its tendency towards the object is the same. And is a man to let such a mere unintelligent and almost involuntary impulse drive him? And ii is just as true, too, about other bits of our nature, for instance — emotions and passions. Anger is a very good thing; God puts it in us. It is meant to be exercised. Yes! But it is meant to be governed. And so joy, mirth, fear, and all the rest of them; all these are inseparable from the perfecting of a man's nature. But their unbridled working is the ruin of a man. And then excellences want to be controlled, in order that they may not run to faults. Some edible plants, if they once run to seed, are ruined for food; so a man's good qualities need to be kept under, in order that they may not become exaggerated into weaknesses. And a man's bad qualities, natural weaknesses and defects of character, which are too deeply engrained in him ever to be got rid of — these want control in order that they may be turned into excellences, as it is quite possible for them to be.. What did God put a will into you for, but that you might be able to say not "I like"; or "I was tempted, and I could not help it"; but that you might, before each action, be able to say "I will"; and that passions, and the stings of lust and sense, of appetite and flesh, and emotions and affections, and vagrant fancies and wandering thoughts, and virtues that were running to seed, and weaknesses that might be cultivated into strength, might all know the master touch of a governing will, and might obey as becomes them? And what did God give you a conscience for, but that the will, which commands all the rest, might take its orders from it?

II. THIS ABSOLUTE NECESSITY IS A PROVED IMPOSSIBILITY. From the beginning moral teachers of all sorts have been saying to men, "Rule yourselves"; and from the beginning the attempt made to govern myself by my unaided self is doomed to failure. Not absolute failure, thank God! I would not be understood as if I were denying that, to a large extent, every man and woman has this power of self-government. But I do want you to consider that the worth of self-control depends, to a large extent, on the motive from which it is practised; and that, unfortunately, for twenty men that will exercise it for the sake of temporal purposes and immediate advantage, there is one who will exercise it for the sake of higher motives. A great deal of the moral reformation and restraint which the best of men, who are not Christians, put in practice upon themselves, is exactly like taking a child with scarlet fever and putting it into a cold bath. You drive in the eruption, and that is about as much as you do, except that you make the disease worse, because you have driven it in. But, beyond that, when once a man's passions, or affections, or desires, or any other part of him, have got the bit between their teeth, and have cast off control, it is impossible to bring them again into obedience. When the very instrument by which we are to coerce the worst part of our nature is itself tainted, what, in the name of common sense, is to be done then? When you send out the military to suppress the mob, and the military, bayonets and all, go over to the mob, there is nothing left for the sovereign but to abdicate. As somebody has said about such a matter, it is a bad job when the extinguisher catches fire. And that is exactly the condition which men stand in who are seeking to exercise a thorough-going self-restraint, when the self which should govern is itself tainted and evil, the will bribed and enslaved, the conscience sophisticated and darkened. What is the use of saying to such a man, "Govern thyself"?

III. HERE WE HAVE A CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, IF WE CHOOSE TO MAKE IT SO. Let these three things, faith, strength, insight, work upon you, and they will make the impossible possible. That is to say, if you want to govern yourselves begin with faith. We rule ourselves when we let Jesus Christ rule us. The Christian man, thinking of his conflict, and knowing that with his ten thousand it is hard for him to meet the twenty thousand who are arrayed against him, invokes, as some petty chief of a weak tribe might, the aid of the great emperor whose dominions are at hand, and when he stretches his protecting power over the little territory there is liberty and there is victory for the trembling prince. So hand over the authority and the sovereignty of thy soul to Jesus Christ, and He will give thee the strength to govern thyself. And, in like manner, we have here implied another prescription, "Add to thy strength, temperance." II I am in Christ it is not a question of one bit of my nature against the other, but it is a question of the higher nature, which is His, flowing into mine, and so enabling me, the true me, which is Christ in me, to keep down the animal and the evil that attaches to me. And, in like manner, there is the third condition of self-command here; that knowledge of which the preceding clause speaks, which is mainly a clear insight into Christian duty. If we have once clear in sight the dictates of an enlightened conscience, felt to be Christ's will, then it will not be so hard to put the screw on all that rebels against Him, and to stimulate (for that is a part of self-command) the lagging and slothful graces of our hearts. So it comes to this, the necessity, which is an impossibility for everybody else, is a possibility for the weakest among us, if we let Christ rule in our hearts. Put the reins into Christ's hands, and He will make you kings over yourselves, and priests unto Him.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Temperance

Thomas Adams.

The grace of temperance may be here diversely understood.

I. FOR SUCH A DISCRETION AS MAY SEASON ALL THESE GRACES; So taken it is the salt of every virtue. Devotion without discretion is like a hasty servant that runs away without his errand. Profession of faith without temperance is turned into hypocrisy or preposterous zeal; virtue without it is folly. Patience without discretion wrongs a good cause. Godliness without temperance is devotion out of its wits. Brotherly kindness without temperance is brotherly dotage. Charity without temperance is prodigality; it gives with an open hand and shut eye.

II. FOR SUCH A DISCRETION AS MAY MODERATE KNOWLEDGE, and qualify that heat to which it is addicted (1 Corinthians 8:1). Temperance is not so much a virtue itself as a marshal or moderator of virtues. It is not enough to do a good work unless the due place, fit manner, and convenient time be observed.

III. FOR SUCH A MODERATION OF THE MIND WHEREBY WE SO DEMEAN OURSELVES AS NEITHER TO SURFEIT ON FULNESS, NOR TO DESPAIR ON WANT.

IV. FOR A MODERATE USE OF OUTWARD THINGS. There is intemperance —

1. In lust; so it is called incontinence. This may be avoided —(1) By subduing the body to the soul (1 Corinthians 9:27).(2) By debarring the flesh all lust-provoking meats and drinks, High diet is adultery's nurse.(3) By avoiding temptations (1 Corinthians 6:18).(4) By meditating on the punishment. What men think most pleasing is most plaguing; to have their lusts granted (Psalm 81:12).

2. In apparel. Christ says the body is more worth than raiment; but some strive to make their raiment more worth than their bodies; like birds of paradise, their feathers are better than their carcases.

3. In meats.(1) For the manner; this is merely circumstantial, and may thus he expressed: too Soon, too late, too daintily, too fast, too much, is gluttony.(2) For the measure: it is an insatiate desire of delicacies (Luke 12:19; Philippians 3:19). As too much rain drowns the fields which moderate showers would make fruitful; so this plethory of diet, instead of conserving nature, confounds it.(3) For the matter: it is great feasting.(4) The effects are manifold and manifest.

(a)Grossness.

(b)Macilency of grace.

(c)Consumption of estate.

(d)Sickness of body.

(3)Rottenness and death. The finest food shall make no better dust.

(i)Abstinence is man's rising, as intemperance was his

(ii)It is God's blessing that makes fat, and not meat.

4. In drinks.

(1)It makes room for the devil.

(2)It overturns the estate.

(3)It poisons the tongue.

(4)It woe to itself (Proverbs 23:29).Learn we how to avoid it —

(a)Because we are men. While the wine is in thy hand, thou art a man; when it is in thy head, thou art become a beast.

(b)Because we are citizens, and therefore should lead civil lives; drunkenness is an uncivil exorbitance.

(c)Because we are Christians (1 Timothy 6:11; Titus 2:11, 12; Luke 21:34).

(Thomas Adams.)

Temperance

This is the third figure in that sum in compound addition the footing up of which makes the complete Christian character. Our modern use of this word temperance restricts it mainly to abstinence from strong drink. Abstinence alone does not fully express the idea, since this presents rather its negative side. The word means strictly "ruling with a strong hand," having the mastery; and when applied to a person, the temperate man is he who governs himself firmly, who has the mastery especially over the passions and appetites of his lower nature.

I. WHAT THIS SELF-CONTROL INVOLVES OR IMPLIES. Ἐγκράτεια is used by Plato and Aristotle to express self-discipline, self-mastery. Xenophon uses it to express the government of all the passions and appetites; such a mastery of the natural desires for food, drink, and sensual gratification, and such a power to endure cold, heat, fatigue, and want of sleep, as become a good general in time of war. (Mem. 1.2, 1; 1.5, 1; 2. 1, 1.) So Paul used the word when addressing Felix, who lived in open adultery with Drusilla, and who indulged every selfish and sensual passion; he reasoned of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment," till the wretch trembled. The Latin temperantia, from which our word temperance is derived, has the same meaning; moderation, regulation, government, self-restraint. And it is applied not only to sensual appetites, but to the government of the tongue, the eyes, the temper; to the restraint of the emotions of grief under calamity or of exultation in victory. Cicero defines temperantia to be that which teaches us to follow reason, both in what we seek and in what we avoid; a firm and judicious control of reason over impulse and desire (De Finibus 1, 14, and 2, 19).

II. BY WHAT MEANS IT MAY BE ATTAINED.

1. This Christian temperance or self-control implies and demands the absolute subjection of all evil appetites, passions, and desires. Those grosser social vices with which the pagan society of the old world was thoroughly infected, and which the old pagan religion encouraged — vices which destroyed home, corrupted literature, debased art, and defiled the altars of the gods — were so little thought of as evils, were so fully sanctioned by custom, were so gilded over by the example of public men, the toleration of law, and the flattering arts of genius, were so protected by the priests, who made them a means of revenue, that it was an easy thing for a Christian at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Antioch, or any like luxurious capital, to slide into sins the bare suggestion of which we should resent with abhorrence. Anger, in the common use of the word, is an evil passion. A passionate man cannot exercise self-control. Some ancient philosophers used the word temperance as the specific opposite of irritability. Self-indulgence in appetite, whether under the form of drunkenness or of gluttony, is a sin. It is a sin against the body, whose beautiful mechanism we strain and impair by any excess. It is an offence against the mind, whose faculties we clog and stupefy by excess. It is a sin against God, the gifts of whose bounty are perverted. Covetousness is specified again and again in the Word of God as one of the worst forms of carnal passion; and the subjection of this is indispensable to self-government. The greed of gain must be subdued, or it will choke the life of godliness in the soul. The Christian must learn to moderate his views and desires of worldly possessions. The tendency to a self-satisfied and even luxurious enjoyment of the world is, perhaps, the strongest antagonist in our times to a simple scriptural piety. Sensual appetite, pleasure-seeking for its own sake, and frivolity in the methods of enjoyment, a vain love of pomp and show — these proceed from a propensity which cannot be reconciled with the love of God.

2. Besides this absolute subjection of all evil passions and propensities, the law of temperance requires that those natural desires which are in themselves innocent and lawful, should, both as to the manner and the measure of their indulgence, be regulated by a regard for the highest good of the soul. Appetites and tastes we have which were never designed to be our tempters and tormentors — making the body a mere battlefield of the soul — but were meant to minister to a pure and healthy enjoyment. But the peculiarity of these native appetites and tastes in man is that they do not, like the instincts of animals, regulate themselves, but require the mild restraint of reason. That is a nice point — a hair-line — where desire instead of ministering to rational enjoyment, oversteps the bounds of reason, and becomes an ungovernable passion. Keep well within that line.

3. It has been assumed in this discussion that since all sin concentrates in a selfish will, this of course must be subdued in order to a sound and perfect self-control. But I wish to insist upon the idea that selfishness is not merely to be restrained, held in check by compromises, but to be conquered, if ever the soul would gain the mastery of itself for God. Our love of God, to be complete, must be unconditional. The existence of a calculating, selfish spirit is incompatible with the very idea of love.

III. HOW SHALL IT BE ATTAINED?

1. Not by mere force of will, determining to override, and if possible to annihilate the sensibilities and propensities of our nature, whether for good or evil. The cold impassiveness of marble is not self-control, nor can the Christian perfect his moral nature by cutting away all natural emotions and sympathies. One may conquer many an appetite and passion by mere force of will, and in so doing may strengthen the will itself in resistance to God, and may stiffen that will with the pride of self-righteousness.

2. Neither is self-control to be attained by the arbitrary mortification of the body, by means of denials and penances. Christianity was not made for the desert and the convent, but for the living and hostile world; and we are not to become saints by secluding ourselves from the outer world, but are to be saints in it by the power of a new life.

3. But in order to gain self-control we must study ourselves, especially as to our weak points of character, and aim to conquer specific modes or habits of evil to which we are prone.

4. Again, the power of self-control will be strengthened if we cherish habitually the sense of God's presence and of His watchful eye. And not only the thought of God as ever nigh to us, but the presence of God by His spirit within us must be cherished if we would govern ourselves by His law. The apostle enumerates temperance, self-government among the fruits of the Spirit. And now, in conclusion, let me urge you to give all diligence to add this grace to your character; to perfect yourself in the government of your own heart.(1) I urge you to this diligence by the greatness of the object to be obtained. Consider what it is to gain the mastery over a single passion. Think of the poets, the statesmen, the warriors who have sunk under the inebriating cup and have left a dishonoured name.(2) I exhort you to be diligent in this self-conquest because it is made practicable by timely diligence. Passions indulged have a rapid and fearful growth.(3) I exhort you to this self-control for your own peace of mind.(4) Your duty to Christ and your professed hope in Him require that you shall govern yourself in His spirit. "He died for all, that they should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again."

(Joseph P. Thompson.)

Self-mastery

U. R. Thomas.

I. The NATURE of self-mastery.

II. The DIFFICULTIES of self-mastery.

1. Hereditary.

2. Surrounding.

3. Inherent.

III. The ADVANTAGES of self-mastery. The evils from which it saves — physical, social, spiritual.

IV. The MEANS of self-mastery.

1. Fellowship with other self-conquerors.

2. Communion with Jesus Christ.

3. Help from heaven.

4. Earnest, brave endeavours.

(U. R. Thomas.)

Temperance

D. J. Hamer.

Temperance, self-mastery, the power of self-restraint, is a necessary part of Christian life, natural to it, indispensable to its perfection. Let me illustrate what I mean. You have a servant: he comes to you unacquainted with the perfect working of your system of business, strange to you, strange to the service he has to render; you do not take him into your full confidence at first; you give him such detailed directions that he cannot well make a mistake. By and by you give him your confidence, you throw him upon his honour; he knows as well as if you were always telling him what you want him to do. If there comes to pass a transaction different from what he has been engaged in, he knows your principles so well that he can complete it without referring to you at all. Detailed instruction is no longer necessary. It strikes you, too, very forcibly sometimes, does it not, that the higher position which the servant now occupies may be much more abused than the lower — the more mechanical office? He is freer in one sense from control, and, if he be a good man, the very fact that you put him on his honour in your service makes him doubly dutiful. But you know that confidence may be abused, and the fuller the trust, the greater the possibility of abuse. You know that freedom — leaving a man to act for himself, with nothing but well-instilled principles to guide him — means possibility of delinquency as well as possibility of uprightness. You say, in a word, that the man has knowledge; and that knowledge will be a dangerous thing for him and for you unless it be conjoined with self-mastery, self-restraint. You say, in other words, that in this high, confidential, honourable position in which the servant stands, to be faithful and perfect in his service he must "add to his knowledge, temperance." You have raised your servant from being little better than a machine, and you have made a man of him; the risk increases with the dignity. Intemperance is of two kinds — asceticism and licentiousness; temperance is the mean between the two. If a man is of such a nature that he cannot use his freedom without abusing it, if he must go to one extreme or the other, it is better that he should be an ascetic than a theological libertine, just as it is better for a man who must be either an entire abstainer or a drunkard, that he should be the former. Both extremes are equally intemperate; but, of course, while there is not much more than self-denial in the one, there is sin in the other.

(D. J. Hamer.)

Self-control

T. G. Selby.

A river is usually an unmixed blessing to a country. It fertilises adjacent lands. It presents a matchless highway for commerce. But there are exceptions to the rule. One of the largest rivers in the world is known by the name of "China's sorrow." The banks through which the Yellow River flows for nearly a thousand miles of its course are so low and so friable that, with the first flash of the spring floods, away they sink, and thousands of square miles of country are laid under water. It is not hemmed in by granite or limestone gorges like its great and incomparably useful neighbour the Yang Tsze. Its torrents are unrestrained. Within historical times it has shifted its course altogether, and discharges itself into the sea some hundreds of miles away from the old mouth. Although a river of first-class dimensions, counted by the volume of water it discharges, for nearly a thousand miles of its course it is scarcely navigable. It is a colossal power for good wasted through the lack of strong, binding power in its banks. And there are not a few people who are like this capricious river in the career they follow. We might, perhaps, describe them as the "Church's sorrow." There is uncommon virtue or potency in their characters, and they are not altogether wanting in knowledge. But through the lack of this temperance or "self-restraint" they break out at given periods like "China's sorrow," and make schism and faction in the Church, and fritter away their own capacity for usefulness, and possibly in the end shift their course into altogether unexpected channels.

(T. G. Selby.)

Patience

I. THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE IN REFERENCE TO ALL THAT IS UNWELCOME AND SORROWFUL. "In your self-control supply patience." Is there one of us who is not aware of some crook in the lot? Well, then, this is true wisdom, quietly take it and let it work as it is meant to work. It is Christian patience that is here enjoined, not the mere stoical, submitting to the inevitable; not the mere pride of not showing my feeling; not the mere foolish attempt to argue myself into insensibility. This Christian patience has for its very first element the recognition of the bitterness of the cup that He gives us to drink. The second element in Christian patience is quietly bearing, with submitted and acquiescent will, the pain or sorrow that comes upon us. Now, remember where, in our series of Christian graces, this wise endurance of the inevitable and God-sent suffering comes. It comes after self command. That teaches us that it will take a great effort of self-control to keep the quivering limb quite still, if undrugged by any false anesthetic, under the gleaming knife. But we can do it. And remember, too, that this injunction of Christian patience comes in a series which is all dependent on faith. Patience is possible when beneath all the sorrows, be they great or small, we recognise God's will. And in another way faith ministers patience by teaching us to understand and recognise the meaning of sorrows.

II. THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS ALL DIFFICULTY, THE ARMOUR FOR THEM THAT STRUGGLE. What we have to deal with here is Christian perseverance. And about that I have only two things to say. First, how impossible it is to get any wholesome, vigorous Christian life without it; and in the second, how faith likewise ministers to all persistent effort and energy. As to the first, no course of life which has in view a far off end, towards which all its efforts are to be directed, but runs the risk of wearying ere the end is attained. The quiet persistence with which the leaf "grows green and broad, and takes no care"; the quiet persistence, with which from tiny knob, hard and green, the grape advances to blushing purple, and juicy sun-warmed mellowness, is the type of the fashion in which alone the harsh crudities of nature can be turned into the sweetnesses of grace. "Add to your faith persistence." And be thankful to remember that our gospel alone gives men motives and power thus to persevere to the end.

III. THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHRISTIAN SOUL TOWARDS LONG-DEFERRED GOOD. There is an element of hope in the New Testament conception of patience. In fact, in some passages the word seems almost to be a synonym for hope, and we read in other places of the patience of hope. This view of the "patience of hope" suggests to us a thought or two. The weakness and the misery of all earthly anticipation is that it is full of tumult and agitation. Hope is not calm, but the very opposite. As usually entertained it leads to impatience and not to patience. And the reason why hope is impatient is because we foolishly set our hopes on things that are too near us, and on things that are uncertain. The man that is only going a railway journey of an hour's duration will be more tired at the end of the first half-hour than a man who is going a journey of a day's duration will be at the end of the first half of the day. If we were only wise enough to fling our hopes far enough forward, and to set them upon that future upon which they may fasten, which is as certain as the past, there would be no need and no possibility of the agitations that perturb all earthly anticipations. And you can get the patience that endures and persists where you get everything else — from Him who is its example as well as its giver.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Patience