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 Christian Character 
 
 A STUDY IN NEW TESTAMENT 
 MORALITY 
 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introduction—The Importance of Character 9-12 
 
 Chapter I.—The Source of Christian Char¬ 
 acter . 12-38 
 
 A. Christ as Moral Teacher: features of His 
 
 Teaching.13-21 
 
 1. The Emphasis on Motive—2. The Positive 
 Nature of the Precepts—3. The Universal Scope. 
 
 B. Christ as Standard : His Example . . 21-29 
 
 1. Its Validity—2. Its Perfection—3. Its Authority. 
 
 C. Christ as Redeemer.29-38 
 
 1. The Need of Man : (a) The Nature of Sin ; 
 
 (b) the Forms of Sin ; ( c) the Consequences of 
 Sin—2. The Work of Christ—3. Resultant Features 
 of Christian Character : (a) the basis of its Possi¬ 
 bility; ( b) its Ruling Principle; (c) its Inspiring 
 Motive. 
 
 Chapter II. The Discipline of Christian 
 Character.39-64 
 
 A. The New Life Begun .... 40-44 
 
 1. The Power—2. The Method—3. The Act. 
 
 B. The Training of the New Life : God’s 
 
 means ....... 44-64 
 
 1. Temptation: (a) Its Possibility ; (b) Its Forms; 
 
 ( c ) Methods of meeting it—2. Suffering : ( a ) Its 
 Forms ; ( b ) Its Functions ; ( c ) Its Acceptance— 
 3. Work: Results for character— (a) Humility ; 
 ( b ) Perseverance; ( c) Concentration ; ( d ) Sym¬ 
 pathy ; ( e) Increase of capacity. 
 
8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter III. The Culture of Christian 
 Character .64-124 
 
 A. The Body.65-79 
 
 1. Its Importance for Character—2. Bodily Sins : 
 (a) Their penalty ; ( b ) Their heinousness ; ( c ) 
 
 The necessary discipline—3. Care of the Body : 
 (a) Dress ; ( b ) Health ; ( c ) Athletics. 
 
 B. The Mind.80-93 
 
 1. The Duty of Mental Culture : (a) Mind as 
 organ of personal life; ( b) Mind in relation to 
 Character—2. Cultivation of Mental Faculties : 
 (a) Reason ; ( 6 ) Imagination ; ( c ) Memory—3. 
 The Use of Books. 
 
 C. Conscience.93-105 
 
 1. The Nature of Conscience; Study of Rom. ii. 
 14, 15—2. Our Duty toward Conscience : (a) To 
 train it; means to be employed ; ( b ) To obey it ; 
 consequences of disobedience ; ( c ) To vindicate 
 it; the public conscience. 
 
 D. The Will.105-124 
 
 1. The Freedom of the Will: (a) Self-determina¬ 
 tion ; ( 6 ) Moral choice; (c) Self-surrender—2. 
 The Training of the Will; means to be employed : 
 (a) Submission to all constituted authority; ( b) 
 Prompt performance of every duty to which Con¬ 
 science bears witness ; (c) Gymnastic Exercises— 
 3. The Operation of the Will: (a) The material; 
 differences of Sex, Temperament, Talent, Age, 
 Rank, Calling; ( 6 ) The Process ; the Act; the 
 Habit; the Character, its reaction upon Will; (c) 
 The Power ; the human and divine aspects of the 
 making of Character. 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 A STUDY IN NEW TESTAMENT MORALITY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The Importance of Character. 
 
 Character is man’s true Self, that which he really 
 is. What a man has, rank, possessions, and the 
 like, is clearly distinct from himself. He may have 
 copious advantages ; he may be the poorest thing 
 that breathes. Even what a man does is not identi¬ 
 cal with himself, though it is often all that the world 
 can judge him by. A man may do great things 
 which put their stamp on history, and influence the 
 lives of all subsequent generations, and yet be him¬ 
 self greater or less than his works. The character 
 makes the man. If that be fair and good, the man 
 is worthy. Character is the highest achievement, 
 the mightiest influence, amid the thousands which 
 enter into the complex life of man. “To get good 
 is animal, to do good is human, to be good is divine. 
 The true use of a man’s possessions is to help his 
 work, and the best end of all his work is to show us 
 what he is. The noblest workers of our world be¬ 
 queath us nothing so great as the image of them¬ 
 selves.” * 
 
 a Martineau, Sermon on “ Having, Doing, and Being,’’ in En¬ 
 deavours after a Christian Life. 
 
IO 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 When we approach the study of character, and 
 inform ourselves even generally about it, one fact 
 establishes itself with axiomatic certainty, the Chris¬ 
 tian character presented in the New Testament 
 is a type absolutely new in the moral history of the 
 race, of unique and commanding excellence. It is a 
 fact, let evolutionists make of it what they will, that 
 there is finality in morals. This is the highest, the 
 absolute, the ideal. The evolution of man is to¬ 
 wards a type already manifested. This conviction 
 is not reached by depreciating anything in man’s 
 history. We do all justice to the type of Greek 
 or Roman virtue, and we appeal to instances of 
 heroism, which classic history presents as a stimulus 
 to Christians. We do justice to the type of char¬ 
 acter presented in the Old Testament, and this, to 
 some minds, is even more difficult than fairly to 
 appreciate the classic type. And when we have 
 done this, and have entered most fully into the 
 elements of grandeur and beauty presented in 
 Greek sage, Roman soldier or statesman, Hebrew 
 psalmist or prophet, we pass to the New Testament 
 with the distinct conviction that here we have a type 
 congruous indeed with the others, and gathering into 
 itself their excellences, yet supreme in its own loveli¬ 
 ness, attracting to itself as they never did the ad¬ 
 miration and loyalty of heart and intellect, per¬ 
 petuated as they never were, nor could have been, 
 in the lives and deaths, not of a select few, but of 
 unnumbered multitudes. Of this New Testament 
 type it has been well said, “ A copy of the ‘ mind of 
 Christ,’ it came with new and unthought-of possi¬ 
 bilities of goodness. It was no dream, no specula- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 II 
 
 tion, no theory on paper or literary picture. It has 
 proved itself by the continual trial of centuries, and 
 by a thousand tests ; by infinitely varied images of 
 mercy, nobleness, self-discipline, self-devotion ; by 
 the martyr’s fortitude and the missionary’s sacrifice, 
 proved itself in many a patient and suffering life, in 
 many a generous enterprise, in many a holy death¬ 
 bed, in the blessed peace and innocence of countless 
 homes” (Dean Church, Discipline of the Christian 
 Character). 
 
 In Christian character, therefore, we find God’s 
 end in the creation of man set forth. This is man 
 as God meant him to be. There is no worthier 
 ambition for man than to enter into God’s mind 
 regarding him, and to make God’s design for him 
 his own resolute endeavour. To become what God 
 would have him be ought to be the passion of man’s 
 heart. Any conception of life, even though it be 
 couched in religious phraseology, which falls short 
 of this is inadequate and misleading. Especially 
 destructive will any representation of Christianity 
 be which makes it possible for a man to imagine 
 that he can be right with God when he is not 
 pressing forward to the realisation of God’s aim. 
 Denial of character as the be-all and end-all of 
 religion is worse than intellectual error. Intel¬ 
 lectual error may not touch the springs of spiritual 
 life. Moral stagnation is death. 
 
 It behoves young men and women, therefore, in 
 uniting themselves with the Christian Church, to 
 consider well the career upon which they enter. If 
 all they hope and desire is conformity to a conven¬ 
 tional standard of thought and action, sufficient to 
 
12 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 make them comfortable in the assurance of future 
 happiness, they lose their pains. Whatever they 
 may be nominally, they are not really Christians. 
 To be a Christian is to be committed to a career 
 whose goal is the Christian character (Rom. viii. 29 ). 
 Unless they set out with the resolution to become 
 what God in His Word declares He designs them to 
 be, they had better not enter at all on the profession 
 of a Christian. Their entrance is a beginning, not a 
 termination. The Christian life, with the Christian 
 character as its glory, cannot be dissected and its 
 elements analysed. It can only be understood by 
 living it, and it can be lived only by the inspiration 
 of God. There can be no text-book of the Christian 
 life. Yet life ought to be made the subject of re¬ 
 flection and study. Clear thinking will help right 
 acting. Every intelligent and high-minded young 
 man or woman will set life forth in many an hour 
 of serious thought. The sole aim of the following 
 pages is to help them in such meditations, and to 
 aid them in making more clear to themselves the 
 ideal they have set before them. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Source of Christian Character. 
 
 Christian character dates from the Person of 
 Christ. It came into the world with Him. It has 
 maintained itself in the world by immediate inspira¬ 
 tion from Him. He is the source of its power, and 
 He is the goal of its aspiration. 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 13 
 
 In claiming this for our Master, we do not find 
 ourselves in any serious opposition to those who 
 profess no adherence to the doctrines of Chris¬ 
 tianity. The supremacy of Jesus Christ is un¬ 
 questioned in the sphere of morals. It is our 
 contention, however, that He holds this position, 
 and is, in races and in individuals, the source and 
 energy of all upward movement in ethics, because 
 He is what His disciples, within three days of His 
 death, found Him to be, no mere memory, however 
 lovely and pathetic, but a living Person, with whom 
 it was possible to have real fellowship. In studying 
 Christ as the source of Christian character, let us 
 view Him under three aspects, as Moral Teacher, 
 as Example and Standard, and as Redeemer. 
 
 A. CHRIST AS MORAL TEACHER.— We hold 
 it to be, indeed, impossible, strictly speaking, to 
 consider Jesus Christ merely as a teacher. In 
 all His moral teaching He is consciously and 
 avowedly speaking, not as a mere enquirer, like 
 Socrates, or a mere commentator, like the scribes 
 and lawyers of His own day, but as King, re¬ 
 vealing the constitution of the Kingdom of 
 God, portraying the character of its citizens, 
 and binding His rules upon men as obligations to 
 Himself. Keeping this in view, however, it is 
 practically convenient to look for a little at His 
 teaching by itself. As we rise from the study of 
 that teaching, doubtless our most vivid impression 
 will be that of its astounding novelty. What He 
 Himself said of the Commandment of Love, that it 
 was new (John xiii. 34 , 35 ), we apply to the whole 
 scope of His ethic ; it is emphatically a new thing 
 
CHRISTIAN CHAR A CTER: 
 
 
 in the earth. To institute a comparison between it 
 and that of Plato and Aristotle would lead us too 
 far afield.® 
 
 The teaching of Jesus, however, stands in close 
 and conscious relation to the moral code of the Old 
 Testament. This was the text-book of the religious 
 teachers of His time, and in its morality His con¬ 
 temporaries were trained. He was Himself pro¬ 
 foundly conscious of the contrast between His own 
 teaching and that which the people were receiving, 
 a contrast in which was involved the whole trans¬ 
 ference from the old dispensation to the new. In 
 this contrast we observe three outstandingfeatures:— 
 1. The Emphasis upon Motive. —The morality 
 of the Old Testament dealt mainly with outward 
 action, and could, accordingly,be expressed in a code. 
 It is true that there is much more in the Old Testa¬ 
 ment than this. Its conception of the divine ideal 
 for man is much more than adherence to a scheme 
 of laws. Its insight into sin is far deeper than mere 
 breach of an enactment. Its hope of salvation is far 
 higher than mere escapefrom consequences of breach 
 of law. At the same time, this, which is more than 
 law, in which the revelation of grace shall be clearly 
 made, is still for the Old Testament an expectation 
 of the time to come. Its immediate demands can 
 only be expressed in legal form. It confronts con¬ 
 science with a code. The scribes were not in error 
 in regarding the morality of the inspired books con¬ 
 fided to their keeping as a system of legislation. 
 
 a A short but most helpful introduction to such a comparative 
 study will be found in “ The Christian Ethic,” by Professor Knight 
 of St Andrews. 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 15 
 
 But they were profoundly in error in not perceiving 
 that the keeping of enactments cannot constitute a 
 real righteousness, and may even be made a cover 
 for deep inward impurity. By this error the teach¬ 
 ing of the scribes was entirely vitiated. They 
 preached a false standard, laid upon conscience an 
 intolerable burden, and had for inevitable failure 
 no remedy whatever. By this error also their lives 
 were deeply tainted, so that the records of their 
 time present absolute justification for the sternest 
 woes pronounced by Jesus (Matt, xxiii. 13-36). 
 
 Jesus in His teaching penetrates beneath the out¬ 
 ward action, and lays absolute emphasis on motive. 
 He is concerned, not with an outward conformity 
 to law, which may be complete and yet grossly in¬ 
 sincere, and which, even if sincere, cannot, in its 
 very nature, constitute the perfection of character, 
 but with the inner springs of action, the state of the 
 heart, the attitude of the man to God and duty. 
 These Law cannot reach, and till they are reached 
 Law cannot be, in the highest sense, kept. This is 
 the standpoint from which He criticises the morality 
 of the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt. v. 20). In the 
 course of the Sermon on the Mount He speaks of 
 the Old Testament legislation regarding murder, 
 adultery, oaths, retaliation, and love of our neigh¬ 
 bour, and points out its limitations and its incapacity 
 to produce real righteousness, while at the same time 
 He indicates the manifestation of the Kingdom type 
 of character in respect to these matters. Passages 
 abound in which the same emphasis on motive is 
 laid. Specially noteworthy is Matt. xv. 16-20. So 
 vhoroughly blinded were the disciples by the con- 
 
i6 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 ventional morality of the day that they could not 
 understand what really defiled a man. Cf also 
 Matt. vii. 21 ; xviii. 35. 
 
 Being thus inward and spiritual, the morality 
 which Christ taught cannot be forced into a code. 
 It is true we might conceivably write down a list of 
 injunctions, precepts, and rules compiled from the 
 words of Jesus, but they would in no sense constitute 
 His moral teaching. We could not exhaust it in 
 ten thousand commandments. Jesus did not even 
 attempt, as Greek moralists from their intellectual 
 attitude necessarily did, to draw up a list of virtues 
 embodying the type of character He desired to pre¬ 
 vail. His style of teaching is informal, occasional, 
 and often paradoxical. We gather His meaning 
 chiefly from instances and illustrations, not because 
 His ethic is shallow or fragmentary, but because it 
 touches the depths of man’s spirit, and comprehends 
 the whole of his manifold experience. 
 
 2. The positive nature of the Precepts. 
 —It follows from the character of Old Testament 
 morality as a legislation, that its precepts .are 
 largely negative in form. Its characteristic ex¬ 
 pression is, “ Thou shalt not.” In truth, legislation 
 necessarily concerns itself with restraining rather 
 than stimulating and guiding action. This is by no 
 means to cast a slight on the function of restraint, 
 as a most useful moral discipline. It is true—as 
 opponents of the temperance cause never fail to 
 remind us—that we cannot make a man sober by 
 act of Parliament. But we can, by act of Parlia¬ 
 ment, lay such restraints upon his actions, as shall 
 prevent him doing injury to himself or others, and 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 17 
 
 we do, therefore, open up possibilities of real moral 
 advancement. At the same time, this function of 
 restraint, even when supported by all manner of 
 deterrents in the shape of threatened penalties, is 
 necessarily very limited in the sphere of its influence, 
 and can never amount to a renewal of character or 
 reformation. For this there is wanted a regenerative 
 touch laid on heart and will, the springs of action and 
 source of character. This is what Christ proposes 
 to do. He seeks to capture the inner citadel of man’s 
 nature, to bring the man himself into harmony with 
 the highest good, so that all his actions shall 
 emanate from the constraint of an accepted prin¬ 
 ciple of life. Constraint , not restraint , is the key¬ 
 note of New Testament morality. Christ’s charac¬ 
 teristic phrase is “ Thou shalt,” rather than “ Thou 
 shalt not” ; and “Follow me,” rather than “Thou 
 shalt.” 
 
 The originality of the brief compendium of duty 
 known as the Golden Rule lies in the change from 
 negative to positive form. According to a well- 
 known story, an inquirer demanded of Shammai to 
 be taught the law while he stood on one foot. 
 Shammai drove him away with indignation. Of 
 Hillel the inquirer made the same request, and he, 
 with greater insight, at once replied, “ Whatsoever 
 thou wouldest that men should not do to thee, that 
 do not thou to them. All our law is summed up in 
 this saying.” Similarly a saying of Confucius is 
 reported, “True reciprocity consists in not doing to 
 others what you would not want done to yourself.” 
 The form of our Lord’s injunction—“All things 
 whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 18 
 
 ye even so to them ”—carries with it much more 
 than a verbal change. It transfers the secret of 
 character from the outskirts to the centre, and im¬ 
 plies an inner determination of will towards the ful¬ 
 filment of the highest good. The author of “ Ecce 
 Homo ” brings out the special feature of Christian 
 ethic thus : “To the duty of not doing harm, which 
 may be called justice, was added the duty of doing 
 good, which may properly receive the distinctively 
 Christian name of Charity.” 
 
 The same central conception of morality is con¬ 
 veyed in Christ’s dealing with the Young Ruler 
 (Luke xviii. 18-23). The young man claimed to 
 have kept the law, and no doubt he had kept it 
 barely as law. The one thing he lacked was the 
 inward surrender of heart, which, in action, should 
 not limit itself to restraints or wait on an outward 
 voice, but should be an abiding and positive con¬ 
 straint. This the Master demanded, and this, with 
 quick apprehension of the comprehensive nature of 
 the demand, far exceeding the most elaborate code, 
 the young man sorrowfully refused. 
 
 The same idea appears in the parable of the 
 talents, in the boundless indignation of the Master 
 toward the slothful servant (Matt. xxv. 26-30). 
 
 In the kingdom of heaven there are no specified 
 limits, by simply keeping within which a man may 
 keep clear of condemnation. The Kingdom itself 
 is within us “as a great yearning,” to use George 
 Eliot’s phrase, or rather as an irresistible spring of 
 eager energy. This man, who hid his lord’s money, 
 displayed by his mere inactivity the absence of this 
 inner spring, and thus revealed his real disloyalty. 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 19 
 
 Of this feature of His moral teaching, the Master 
 is Himself the best illustration. He “ went about,” 
 not merely keeping clear of evil, but “ doing good.” 
 
 3. The Universal Scope. —This aspect is an 
 inference, rather than an actual definition of 
 the Master’s. Old Testament morality was, in the 
 nature of the case, for Jews. It is true that 
 where the evangelic interest becomes conscious, 
 as eg ., pre-eminently in the second part of Isaiah, 
 there is also the presence of universalism. Even 
 so, however, Jerusalem is centre of the new econ¬ 
 omy, and the type of life is distinctively Jewish : 
 Is. xliv. 5 ; xlix. 22, 23 ; lv. 5 ; lx. 3-10 ; lxvi. 19-21. 
 In our Lord’s own day, the morality of the Pharisees 
 had made systematic what had been the necessary 
 limitation of the prophetic vision ; and had drawn 
 the hardest line of demarcation between Jew 
 and Gentile, and even between Jew and Sam¬ 
 aritan. Across this line duty scarcely existed, and 
 love could not flow. A morality which rose above 
 legalism, and found its domain not in enactments 
 but in motives, could not tolerate such limits. Our 
 Lord’s moral teaching does not retain even the Jewish 
 cast, which the prophetic teaching could not avoid, 
 and tacitly denies all such racial limitations as the 
 Pharisaic code maintained. The question was 
 once brought before him in distinct form in the 
 Lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbour?” 
 The whole spirit of legalism breathes in the 
 question. The very breath of the new ethic is 
 felt in the answer, couched, as it was, in that 
 parabolic form, which our Lord was wont to 
 adopt, in dealing with the unintelligent, or the 
 
20 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 unsympathetic. The figure of the Good Sama¬ 
 ritan proclaims, once for all, the universality of 
 New Testament morality. It opens the possibility 
 of the highest life to men of all races, and of 
 every form of civilisation, and summons them 
 to pursue it. Herein lies the suitability of 
 Christianity as a universal religion. It does not 
 destroy nationality, nor lead an attack on out¬ 
 ward forms, where these do not subvert funda¬ 
 mental conditions of moral life. It offers itself to 
 Hindus or Chinese as the ideal life for them. This 
 has proved one of the preparatives of the heathen 
 world for the reception of Christianity. “ I am not 
 a Christian,” said the Prince of Travancore in 1874, 
 “but I accept Christian ethics in their entirety.” 
 
 But the entirety of Christian ethic leads to Christ 
 as Saviour. If, then, the teaching of Jesus could 
 mean so much to one who was not a Christian, how 
 much more ought it to be to those who see in Jesus 
 much more than a Teacher ? If He be our Teacher, 
 our Christian life is nothing less than discipleship, 
 and it becomes a first charge upon our time and 
 strength to acquaint ourselves with His teaching, to 
 be diligent students of His express words, to seek 
 to catch the spirit which breathes through His 
 special sayings, to open our whole being to the 
 impression of His mind, the control of His will. 
 It is the specific quality of this teaching that it 
 can never be known till it is practised. The test 
 of acquaintance with it and possession of it lies in 
 action and conduct, as these register our moral 
 assimilation to the truths for which we profess 
 admiration; only thus, as He told His disciples, 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 21 
 
 do we escape the doom of unimproved knowledge, 
 John xiii. 17. 
 
 B. CHRIST AS STANDARD: HIS EXAMPLE.— 
 
 As a moral teacher, Christ takes rank with other 
 moral teachers who have left their stamp on the 
 morality of the races to which they belonged. 
 His supeiiority in this aspect is evinced by the 
 fact that His teaching has been accepted as 
 the rule of life by races widely different from 
 that to which He Himself belonged, and has 
 proved itself to be adapted to the require¬ 
 ments of mankind in general. When we enquire 
 into the causes of this, we are led beyond the 
 contents of the teaching itself, and are compelled 
 to seek them in the Person of the Teacher. Had 
 the teaching survived in book form, without any 
 personality to irradiate it and give it life, it is 
 questionable if it would have held a larger place 
 in the minds of men to-day than that of Confucius. 
 It is the Person of Christ which gives power to His 
 teaching. 
 
 When we consider further the connection between 
 the Person and the Teaching, we find that the one 
 is the embodiment, manifestation, and realization of 
 the other. Had the relation of Jesus to His teach¬ 
 ing been that of Socrates to his, His words would 
 no doubt, like those of Socrates, have had many 
 beautiful and pathetic associations derived from 
 His manner of living and dying, and would have 
 been influential in the line of His disciples, in the 
 same sense and degree as those of Socrates were. 
 The special power and world-wide influence of the 
 teaching of Jesus, we therefore conclude, are due to 
 
22 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 the fact that He was, in a sense to which Socrates 
 never attained, the example of His own words. 
 The morality which Jesus taught, He lived. It 
 is not a literary memorial, but a fact of the moral 
 sphere, unique and commanding. The example 
 of Jesus, therefore, verifies His moral teaching, 
 and sets it forth as the ideal of human excellence. 
 To trace the example of Jesus in its manifold 
 application to daily life is a task of inexhaustible 
 interest, but it belongs to special departments of 
 biblical study. Here we can only point out such 
 general aspects of Christ’s example as bear upon 
 the Christian life as a whole. 
 
 i. Its Validity. —It is possible to present the 
 example of Christ in such a form as to deprive it of 
 its value as an instance for our profitable study. If 
 Christ’s moral perfection be treated as a mere 
 inference from His divinity, an air of unreality is 
 cast over it. It ceases to have practical value for 
 human beings. Similarly, if we assert that Christ 
 was not divine, and therefore could not be perfect, 
 we are approaching the subject with a pre-supposi¬ 
 tion quite as abstract, and quite as destructive of its 
 real interest and meaning. The view given in the 
 narratives of Christ’s life, and in the New Testament 
 generally, is that Christ was a man, and possessed 
 a true and perfect human goodness. His example 
 is the instance of a human life, to be studied by 
 those who have the same life to live, and grasped 
 as the ideal for them. No doubt the conditions 
 under which Christ lived his human life differ in 
 several important respects from those to which we 
 are subject. But it is to be clearly observed that the 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 *3 
 
 conditions in His case were not easier, the struggle 
 involved not slighter. Magnify the difference 
 between Him and us to the dimensions assigned 
 in Scripture, we still find in Christ a case of a 
 truly moral development, and are prohibited from 
 offering as excuse for our not attaining to His 
 likeness the contention that He was not genuinely 
 a man. The temptation in the wilderness, let critics 
 make of its form what they will, remains a human 
 experience, differing from what we know of tempta¬ 
 tion only in the terror of the attack and the 
 splendour of the victory. From the record of that 
 incident we know that it was not solitary in the 
 experience of the Son of Man. Again, and yet 
 again, in His life He met that onslaught, and knew 
 the pressure of that temptation ; and thus from the 
 story of His human experience we justify the ex¬ 
 pressions of Heb. ii. 17 ; iv. 15 ; v. 7 ; and rejoice 
 to know that the victorious Christ belongs to the 
 domain of human warfare and human possibilities. 
 
 2. Its Perfection. —We frankly admit that 
 this is essencial to Christian ethic no less than to 
 Christian theology. If, as we contend, the morality 
 of Christ be absolute and universal, the example of 
 Christ must be perfect. Prove it to be imperfect, 
 and at once it becomes conceivable that a better 
 man might be the* - revealer of a higher morality. 
 The burden of proof here lies plainly with those 
 who impugn the absolute goodness of Christ, and 
 on this point we rest satisfied. The world has not 
 lacked those who had the will to prove Him at 
 fault, and if they have failed, as they conspicuously 
 have failed, to make out their case, we may confi- 
 
24 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHAR A C TER: 
 
 dently draw the inference that the thing they tried 
 to do is impossible. The character of Christ, His 
 critics being judges, remains untouched. We go 
 even further, and maintain that insight into the 
 character of Christ, as into every other aspect of 
 His personality, is not within the reach of merely 
 logical processes, and can be attained only in that 
 Christian experience which consists in direct fellow¬ 
 ship with Himself. At the same time there are 
 lines of thought which, if they do not amount to 
 verification, suggest an inference of overwhelming 
 force. 
 
 (a.) The Incidents of His Life .—It has been 
 contended that we have only a small selection of 
 the words and deeds of Christ, and that we have 
 not before us the material for a correct estimate of 
 His character. It has even been suggested that we 
 have as much evidence for the sinlessness of such 
 a man as the Apostle James as for that of Christ. 
 
 If mere enumeration of sayings and acts were 
 all that is required for the estimate of character, 
 we might admit the forcibleness of this reasoning. 
 We do not know all that Jesus said and did. 
 We do not need to know all. We study what 
 has been given to us. We perceive in all we 
 know of Him the unity of a personal life, the 
 vital presence of a character harmonious with itself 
 in all its manifestations. We know this Man. 
 If, therefore, we find in his whole behaviour full 
 correspondence with the will of God, if every 
 attempt to show a discord between His will and 
 the highest goodness and truth has utterly failed, 
 the conviction masters our judgment that He was 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 25 
 
 not as other men, subject to passion, the slave of 
 self-will, that in Him the highest ideal found com¬ 
 plete, unhindered realisation. We rise from the 
 contemplation of His character with an awe upon 
 our souls as of those who have seen the Highest. 
 Even coarse natures like that of Napoleon have felt 
 the thrill of it, if he is accurately reported in the 
 saying attributed to him—“ I know men. This is 
 no mere man.” This impression is confirmed when 
 we learn that it is precisely that which the person¬ 
 ality of Jesus made upon those who were brought 
 into spiritual contact with Him, and who were not 
 such as could conceivably have been influenced by 
 prejudice in His favour. This conviction throbs 
 with intolerable pain through the heart of the 
 traitor as the consequences of his deed break 
 upon his intelligence. This conviction, deepening 
 through every stage of the trial, pierces to the quick 
 the soul of Pilate, case-hardened as he was with 
 cynical selfishness. This conviction, seized and 
 cherished in the last hours of agony, gave the male¬ 
 factor crucified with Him courage to offer the prayer 
 that opened for him the gate of paradise. Add to 
 this the testimony of those who lived in daily inti¬ 
 macy with Him, who, when He was with them, gave 
 to Him a worship impossible had his character not 
 stood the test of such close scrutiny, and who, when 
 He was withdrawn from their bodily vision, lived to 
 proclaim a message of which his absolute moral 
 perfection was an essential element (Acts ii. 22 ; 
 I Peter ii. 22 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; Heb. vii. 26). Proof in 
 a technical sense we may not have. Yet the con¬ 
 clusion we come to is one, the converse of which 
 
26 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 makes all evidence unreliable, and confounds all 
 our estimates of men. 
 
 (b.) His own Consciousness .—Holy men are the 
 first to confess their personal unworthiness. If 
 those whom we have supposed to be holy decline 
 or omit the confession of sin, we at once question 
 their sanctity, and frequently have our suspicions 
 certified by the moral falls which haunt spiritual 
 vain-gloriousness as a Nemesis. But Christ never 
 confessed sin. The most touching part of spiritual 
 biographies is to be found in the record of conflict 
 with evil habit, the expressions of sorrow for defile¬ 
 ment, and aspiration after higher holiness. Such 
 record and such phrases have no place in the re¬ 
 corded life of Christ. We do, indeed, read of the 
 trouble of His soul ; we are admitted to the spec¬ 
 tacle of His agony ; but, in all the anguish, there 
 is not a hint that His own sin added one drop of 
 bitterness to the cup he drank. Far otherwise, we 
 read His own implicit claim to sinlessness (John 
 viii. 46). More significant still are his assertions of 
 absolute spiritual harmony between Him and God, 
 a harmony which the remotest moral difference, the 
 faintest divergence of will, would have utterly de¬ 
 stroyed (Matt. xi. 27 ; John xiv. 7-11). If He were 
 not morally perfect, such claims are worse than base¬ 
 less. In making them He was either so morally 
 blind as not to know when He was coming short of 
 the highest standard, or so radically false that He 
 deliberately said those things with intention to de¬ 
 ceive. In either case His character not merely fails 
 of perfection, but falls far short of the height to 
 which many common men have attained. Either 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 27 
 
 alternative is at once intolerable and absurd. A 
 far more rational view is to see in these claims of 
 Christ, advanced as they were so simply, without 
 parade or self-assertion, the utterance of His con¬ 
 sciousness of the fact that there did exist such 
 relationship to the Father as these records imply. 
 Grant that the relationship existed, it could not fail 
 to express itself, and to find for itself just such 
 expressions as these. The very claim, therefore, 
 which in the case of a sinful man would have laid 
 him open to severest condemnation, becomes in 
 Christ an evidence conclusive of His sinlessness. 
 
 3. Its Authority. —To say that Christ’s example 
 presents us with the type of absolute moral perfec¬ 
 tion is to say that it is at the same time authoritative 
 in the sphere of action. Without anticipating what 
 will have to be said later on as to the nature of con¬ 
 science, it is enough to point out here that man as a 
 personal being has the faculty of recognising ideal 
 excellence whenever it is presented to him, and is 
 therefore under obligation to seek that excellence as 
 soon as recognised. The law was to Israel, and law 
 is to all men, in one stage of moral discipline, the 
 form in which the good is revealed to conscience. 
 But law contains in itself confession of its own 
 failure to accomplish the moral perfecting of man, 
 and points beyond itself,—is, as Paul says, our tutor 
 to bring us unto Christ (Gal. iii. 24). Christ as 
 perfect example fulfils the law (Matt. v. 17). What 
 confronts us is no longer a code, but a Person, the 
 standard and rule of moral life. His teaching 
 carries conviction of its truth, because it is part of 
 Himself, and is illustrated and verified by all He 
 
28 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 said and did. His life becomes itself teaching, or, 
 more properly, legislation. Thus the author of 
 “ Ecce Homo” finely says : “ The law which Christ 
 gave was not only illustrated, but infinitely enlarged 
 by his deeds. For every deed was itself a precedent 
 to be followed, and therefore to discuss the legisla¬ 
 tion of Christ is to discuss his character ; for it may 
 be justly said that Christ himself is the Christian 
 Law.” 
 
 The supremacy of Christ in the domain of morals 
 is admitted even by those who yield to Him no 
 higher function than that of Example. The often- 
 quoted words of J. S. Mill may be here repeated : 
 “ Whatever else may be taken away from us by 
 rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique Figure, 
 not more unlike all his predecessors than all his 
 followers. . . . Religion cannot be said to have made 
 a bad choice in selecting this Man as the ideal 
 Representative, and Guide of Humanity ; nor even 
 now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find 
 a better translation of the rule of virtue from the 
 abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to 
 live that Christ would approve our life.” And if we 
 assign to Him a higher function, are bound to Him 
 by closer ties, and look to Him for more than guid¬ 
 ance, the obligation of accepting His authority 
 is only the deeper and more imperatfve. The 
 Christian life can be nothing less than the Imita¬ 
 tion of Christ. As such He Himself conceives it 
 (John xiii. 15), and as such, the Christian conscience 
 acknowledges it to be (1 John ii. 6), and this 
 Christian men have in all ages sought to make it 
 (1 Cor. xi. 1 ; Heb. vi. 12). 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 29 
 
 It is altogether misleading to represent the 
 Imitation of Christ as a kind of “ counsel of perfec¬ 
 tion ” not meant to be seriously taken by common 
 Christians. It is an imperative binding on all who 
 accept Him as the Standard ; His being more than 
 a Standard giving to the imperative a more strenu¬ 
 ous moral power. The young especially ought to 
 understand that in accepting Christ, and joining 
 His Church, they are committing themselves to 
 nothing less than this ceaseless imitation. 
 
 C. CHRIST AS REDEEMER.— So far, then, 
 we have reached these results—Christ, as Moral 
 Teacher, has revealed the ideal life for man ; Christ, 
 as Example, has in His own person realised it. It is 
 plain, however, that if this were all, the advantage 
 of His presence in the earth would be, as far as the 
 vast majority of our race is concerned, but small 
 indeed. Of what avail is it that one Individual has 
 realised the ideal, if unnumbered millions neces¬ 
 sarily for ever come short of it? His presence to 
 our gaze only adds to the misery of which we are 
 conscious in coming short. We may even say that 
 the presence of a sinful being would be more help¬ 
 ful to us in our efforts after virtue. If Christ be 
 perfect, and if He be no more than a Perfect 
 Pattern, He will be merely a perpetual condemna¬ 
 tion of our imperfection, a ceaseless mockery of our 
 helplessness. How, moreover, on such a supposi¬ 
 tion, are we to construe His character ? If He were 
 conscious, on the one hand, of His own sinlessness, 
 and on the other of His inability to lift men out of 
 their sins, He must have been, He ought to have 
 been, the most utterly wretched Being who ever 
 
30 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 stood on the surface of this sin-cursed world. If He 
 were not, there must have been something amiss 
 with His perfection, something that came short of 
 perfect moral goodness. If He is not more than 
 Example, He is not even that. 
 
 In point of fact, it is impossible to do justice to 
 the study of His character, presented in the four 
 Gospels, without seeing that He is more than 
 Example, that He is, what the New Testament 
 declares Him to have been, what our human need 
 demands, Redeemer also. We are not here con¬ 
 cerned with systematic theology, but we cannot 
 consider the Christian character without pausing to 
 note at least the outlines of the great deed which is 
 the ground of its possibility. 
 
 i. The Need of Man. —One word sums up the 
 need of man—sin. He has other necessities. The 
 State and the Church cannot afford to neglect them. 
 But deeper than the evils of political bondage, 
 of physical surroundings, of intellectual ignorance, 
 lies, as their root and spring, the evil of sin. More 
 imperative than the need of enfranchisement or 
 social reform or education is the need of redemp¬ 
 tion. Not till sin has been dealt with, and put out 
 of the way, can any upward movement for the indi¬ 
 vidual or for society be possible. 
 
 (a.) The Nature of Sin .— Sin is traced in Scrip¬ 
 ture to the deed of man’s will opposing itself to the 
 will of God. Read the story of the Creation and 
 the Fall as an account of the moral constitution of 
 the race, and we learn two things—that God meant 
 man, as an independent personality, to live in 
 harmony with Himself, in all the joy and the splen- 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 3 1 
 
 did possibilities of development which that fellow¬ 
 ship would secure ; and that man, in the exercise 
 of that freedom which was an essential element of 
 his constitution as a person, declined this harmony, 
 and broke away into the false liberty of alienation 
 from God. It is of first importance in the study of 
 character to fix attention on the nature of sin as an 
 act of will. Many circumstances tend to obscure 
 this fundamental fact. Many interests combine to 
 stigmatise this view as harsh, intolerant, and un¬ 
 sympathetic. In reality, the only hope for man’s re¬ 
 demption lies in the fact that sin is his, his own 
 deed, for which he is responsible. 
 
 It may seem a milder view to say that he is not 
 responsible, that heredity and environment have 
 made him what he is. But it is to be observed 
 that, in denying to him responsibility, there is 
 denied to him personality. He is rescued from 
 blame, at the cost of his dignity as a man. This 
 view of man as not responsible, while it has found 
 fresh support in modern science, is as old at least 
 as the time of Ezekiel. He, too, was confronted 
 with the doctrine, urged partly in despair and 
 partly in excuse of sin, that a man’s sin is no more 
 than the consequence of his forefathers’ actions. 
 Against it he sets like a rock the fact of individual 
 responsibility. This is the basis of divine judgment. 
 Neither in caprice nor revenge will God in judging 
 a man take into consideration anything else than 
 the fact of his sin. “ The soul that sinneth,* it 
 shall die.” (See Ezekiel xviii. 4, and the whole 
 chapter.) Similarly, James is troubled with the 
 sophisticated piety of those who argue—God does 
 
32 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 everything; consequently, when I sin, it is God 
 who has led me to it. He replies, first, by a solemn 
 assertion of the holiness of God (i. 13), then by an 
 analysis of the act of sin (vers. 14, 15). It begins 
 in desire ; desire awakens will, and so sin is born. 
 The act may not yet have been perpetrated, but 
 when the will has determined, there is the concep¬ 
 tion of sin. Man rising in the might of will to 
 assert himself against God, that is sin. 
 
 (1 b .) The Forms of Sin .—From this view of sin, 
 as the revolt of self against God, it is evidently im¬ 
 possible to catalogue, or even in any satisfactory 
 way to classify the sins men may commit. Just as 
 no code can prescribe all moral duties, so no code 
 could be devised to particularise and forbid all 
 forms of evil. The question so often asked, “Is it 
 wrong to do so and so ” ? cannot be answered by 
 reference to a rule. Sin is the claim of Self to rule 
 in opposition to God, and the instances in which 
 this may occur defy classification. Nowhere in the 
 New Testament is the attempt made. The most 
 complete list is that which occurs in Gal. v. 19-21, 
 in which there are four classes—(1) Sensual passions; 
 (2) unlawful dealings in things spiritual ; (3) viola¬ 
 tions of brotherly love ; (4) intemperate excesses. 
 (See Lightfoot in loc.) But this list, while wonder¬ 
 fully wide in range, is determined by its reference 
 to the peculiar circumstances, and possibly to the 
 special temperament of those to whom the epistle is 
 addressed. Perhaps the most complete classifica¬ 
 tion is that which considers man as standing in re¬ 
 lation to God, to his own animal nature, and to the 
 world. Hence arise—(1) Pride, man claiming a 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 33 
 
 false superiority ; (2) Sensuality, man sinking be¬ 
 neath his true dignity; (3) Covetousness, man seek¬ 
 ing a false satisfaction. These forms appear in 
 Dante’s great poem. Pride, as a hungry lion; 
 Sensuality, as a spotted panther ; Covetousness, as a 
 famished wolf. It is at once truer, and more practi¬ 
 cally important, to observe that sin, being, what it 
 is, opposition of will to God, has endless ramifica¬ 
 tions, appears in a thousand forms, and assumes 
 the most bewildering transformations. Hence the 
 Scriptures lay great stress on the “deceitfulness 
 of sin” (Heb. iii. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 10; Eph. iv. 22; 
 Jer. xvii. 9). Any one of these forms leads us back 
 to the fountainhead of evil, and raises the whole 
 problem of deliverance. 
 
 (1 c .) The Consequences of Sin .—If sin be understood 
 thus as a breach of a personal fellowship between 
 man created in God’s image and God, for whose glory 
 he is created, and in whom he finds the complete¬ 
 ness of his own being, we see at once the gravest 
 quality of sin ; it sets man forth guilty in God’s 
 sight. 
 
 Behind the special laws we may have broken, 
 behind even the persons we have injured, is God, 
 against whom we have sinned, whose will we have 
 defied, whose Love we have outraged ; Ps. li. 4. 
 With guilt comes condemnation. As a sinner, man 
 is without doubt subject to the wrath of God. Let 
 us not make this anger unethical. God is love; 
 His anger is the anger of holy love, aflame for the 
 fulfilment of its design. Let us be careful also not 
 to refine it to unreality. Admit that the language 
 is anthropomorphic. Eliminate all that we know 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 to belong to the anger of sinful man, personal 
 resentment, caprice, revenge. There still remains 
 anger as God’s moral attitude toward sin and 
 sinners. He has passed, cannot by His own nature 
 but pass, sentence of condemnation upon sinners. 
 At the same time, while condemnation comes upon 
 sinners in name of God, it comes in strict accord 
 with the nature of sin itself. It is not something 
 foreign added to sin, but is the development and 
 expression of what sin in its own nature is. God 
 drove out the man ; Gen. iii. 24. But sin in itself 
 is separation from God. There is native and 
 necessary incongruity between sin and God’s 
 presence and fellowship. No language could do 
 justice to the terror of this thought, and the 
 language of Scripture is studiously calm as befits 
 the unimaginable awfulness of the theme; see 
 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10; Gal. v. 21 ; Rev. xxi. 27. This, 
 then, is the position of the sinner. He has alien¬ 
 ated himself from God. He stands guilty, con¬ 
 demned, in God’s sight. It is idle to speak to 
 such a being of reformation, of imitating the 
 example of Christ, and following His teachings. 
 The man must be reached ere his character be 
 improved. But the man is a sinner, alienated 
 from God. He must be reconciled to God before 
 character in any genuine sense can be formed in 
 him. Christian character requires redemption as 
 the ground of its possibility. 
 
 2. The Work of Christ. —Here also we are 
 in the domain of theology proper. We may have 
 little to do with theories of the atonement. We 
 have, however, everything to do with a Deed and 
 
ITS SOURCE. 
 
 35 
 
 its Significance for us. Between man and a new 
 life for him lies Sin. The deed which alone meets 
 the case is sin-bearing. That One, who was Go^, 
 should bear the sin of man is required by the circum¬ 
 stances of the case. Nothing else can be a perfect 
 propitiation, nothing else can make atonement, bring 
 back the broken harmony of God and man in which 
 alone lies hope for sinners ; and nothing less than 
 this is a fair construction to be put on the words 
 of Christ regarding His death, or the words of His 
 followers as they strove to express the infinite 
 meanings of the Death they at first so piteously 
 misunderstood. Passages are too numerous even 
 to refer to ; but see especially Matt. xx. 28 ; and the 
 words of institution at the last Supper ; Rom. iv. 25 ; 
 v. 6-11 ; 2 Cor. v. 18-21 ; Ephes. ii. 12-17 5 Heb. ix. 
 28 ; 1 Peter ii. 24, 25. 
 
 It is the task of theology to gather together the 
 various lights thrown by these and other passages 
 of Scripture into the depths of the mystery of love ; 
 to set the truth, thus established, in relation to 
 morality, exhibiting its harmony with every aspect 
 of God’s character, and to reason, showing how it 
 harmonises with, while at the same time it tran¬ 
 scends, the highest intellectual powers which God 
 has implanted in man ; and to vindicate for it its 
 place as the heart and centre of the Gospel message. 
 The moral fact established by the atoning death 
 of Christ is the reconciliation of God and man, 
 the undoing of the consequences of Sin, the bring¬ 
 ing together of God and man into that harmony 
 of will which was God’s design in creation. In 
 one word, the death of Christ is the foundation of 
 
36 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 the Kingdom of God. Men, alienated by sin, are 
 now gathered under the sovereign sway of God 
 to begin the career so fearfully interrupted by their 
 transgression. The moral world is not a scene 
 of mere tumult and despair, man plunging ever 
 deeper into transgression, seeking and never finding 
 satisfaction. There has been constituted, in the 
 death of the Redeemer, that kingdom, of which the 
 ancient community of Israel, itself founded in a 
 redemptive act, was a shadow and prophecy, whose 
 near coming was the burden of the Baptist’s 
 message, whose nature was the theme of so much 
 of Jesus’ teaching. 
 
 It is, fundamentally, a new relationship between 
 God and man, according to which they are organi¬ 
 cally one in full moral accord and deep vital union ; 
 and this involves also a new relationship between 
 man and man, in which they are in fullest sense 
 members of one organism, and, therefore, of one 
 another. 
 
 In times of doubt and fear, when evil seems 
 victorious, fresh hope arises when we realise that 
 the moral goal of the race is not a dream, which 
 might be disappointed, but a fact already estab¬ 
 lished, in the might of which, and towards the full 
 vindication of which we labour. The Kingdom has 
 come. There exists that moral organism which 
 has been defined by Dr Candlish as “ the gathering 
 together of men under God’s eternal law of righteous 
 love, by the vital power of his redeeming love in 
 T esus Christ, brought to bear upon them through 
 .he Holy Spirit ” (Cunningham lecture on “ The 
 Kingdom of God,” p. 197). Moral life for man 
 
ITS SOURCE . 
 
 37 
 
 begins when he becomes through faith in Christ a 
 member of this organism, a citizen and neir of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 3. Resultant Features of Christian 
 Character. —From the point of view of the 
 work of Christ, finished in dying, issuing in the 
 Kingdom, we discern three great characteristic 
 features of Christian character, (a.) The basis of 
 its possibility. Guilt makes union to God impos¬ 
 sible ; without that union life and life’s product, 
 character, are impossible. Guilt is atoned for. 
 Christ, our Substitute, has borne that load. It no 
 longer stands between us and God, hemming us 
 into our isolation, affecting us with moral paralysis. 
 We believe in the forgiveness of sins, and from that 
 moment hope arises. Christ is the conscience of 
 the race. To this truth, which of itself has in it 
 more of despair than promise, we add that He is 
 its hope. His goodness does not condemn, because 
 since He has borne our sins, there is now for us no 
 condemnation ; and His goodness is not beyond us, 
 as a new and more terrible revelation of our evil, 
 but within us, at once our deepest aspiration, and 
 the inspiration and energy of our moral regenera¬ 
 tion. ( b .) Its ruling principle. Trace Christian 
 character to its source, and we find it roots itself 
 in the deed of Christ for our redemption. Realise 
 how it comes to pass that we are not now aliens, 
 but included in the Kingdom, with the goal of 
 Christ-likeness shining before us, and we find it is 
 because Christ, in unspeakable love for us, identified 
 Himself with us, and endured the uttermost of 
 sin’s penalty, instead of us. Reduce our moral 
 
38 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 condition to its simplest terms, and we find we 
 cannot put it more accurately or comprehensively 
 than in these words, “bought with a price,” with 
 their strict correlative, “ye are not your own.” 
 Our whole redeemed life lies in deep subjection 
 to the claim of Christ. Christian character accord¬ 
 ingly gains unity and simplicity, and with these 
 strength and certainty, through this dominant 
 principle of recognition of Christ’s Sovereignty. 
 We have but one thing to do, viz., to vindicate 
 Christ’s Sovereignty throughout the whole domain 
 of our nature and constitution, and in every depart¬ 
 ment of life. The character God meant us to have 
 was destroyed by the revolt of Self. Christian char¬ 
 acter is reconstituted by the surrender of Self, and 
 the sanctifying of Christ as Lord in heart and life; 
 i Peter iii. 15 ; R.V. ( c .) Its inspiring motive. 
 Christian character is produced by a deed of love. 
 Its deepest consciousness, its ceaseless inspiration, 
 is, therefore, answering love ; 1 John iv. 10. Through 
 the uprising of this wellspring of action Christian 
 character gains ease, swiftness, and gladness. A 
 character modelled on Law is painful, laborious, 
 slow. Christian character acts with the precision 
 and freedom of an instinct. “ If ye love me, ye 
 will keep my commandments.” Love works by a 
 sweet inevitableness. It is “ dutiful in thought and 
 deed,” and love, says Browning, is “ energy of 
 life.” Christian character is the harmony of God’s 
 universe, and its keynote is this, “ He loved me 
 and gave Himself for me.” Love in man evoked 
 by and answering to Love in God is the law of life 
 for man. Against it there is no law. 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 
 
 We have attained, therefore, this result that Christ 
 is the source of Christian character. Its specific 
 nature is derived from Him ; and its existence as a 
 reality of moral experience stands in Him. We 
 have now to observe that, by necessary consequence, 
 Christian character can manifest itself in any in¬ 
 dividual human being only through personal rela¬ 
 tion to Christ. In making this statement, we ought 
 to be careful lest we unduly narrow the scope of 
 God’s grace. We ought to admit that there may be 
 a relation to Christ, which is, so to speak, sub¬ 
 conscious, and may exist even in those who have 
 never been brought into connection with the Christ 
 of history, so that in them aspects of distinctively 
 Christian character may be found, though they are 
 ignorant of distinctively Christian doctrine. Yet 
 such cases, whether many or few, cannot be made 
 the subject of scientific investigation, and form no 
 real exception to the statement made above. 
 
 It is common for young men or women to be 
 greatly attracted to persons, who are certainly not 
 Christians, who yet possess qualities of mind or 
 heart greatly superior to those of other persons who 
 profess to be Christians. Hence the inference is 
 often carelessly drawn that it does not matter 
 whether there be any personal relation to Christ, 
 that character is enough, and that character may 
 exist apart from Him. The answer lies, first, in 
 
40 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 those general considerations we have already ad¬ 
 duced, proving that Christian character, as a dis¬ 
 tinct type, can exist only as it is rooted in Christ; 
 second, in pointing out that judgment upon in¬ 
 dividual instances is always precarious. The un¬ 
 believer may not be after all so admirable; the 
 professed believer may not be so unworthy. Only 
 prolonged observation will shew. Meantime, it 
 may be prophesied that what is excellent in the 
 unbeliever, being in deepest affinity with Christ, 
 will ultimately lead him to Christ; and that what is 
 unworthy in the Christian will be gradually purged 
 out of him. If the unbeliever remain impervious to 
 the influence of Christ, it will shew that he is not 
 admirable in the highest sense. If the Christian do 
 not morally improve, it will show that his profession 
 has been vain. Practically, therefore, the assertion 
 remains universally true that personal relation to 
 Christ is necessary for the development in the 
 individual of that highest type of moral excellence, 
 the Christian character. It is plain that this sets 
 the claim of Christ in a high and lovely light. To 
 those who have worthy ambitions, who desire to 
 live nobly, it may be said, “ Only as you accept 
 Christ as Teacher, Ideal, and Redeemer, will your 
 ambition be satisfied, and your life be great and 
 good.” 
 
 A. THE NEW LIFE BEGUN.—It belongs to 
 Christian doctrine rather than to Christian ethics 
 to study the experience by which the human spirit 
 becomes knit to Christ. Yet we cannot wholly pass 
 it by, though we can only notice its leading features. 
 
 i. The Power.—T he doctrine of man’s total 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 41 
 
 inability through the Fall is often so stated as to be 
 repellent, even misleading. There can be no doubt, 
 however that it represents ethical fact. Sin is the 
 determination of the will, that is, of the man, by 
 Self in opposition to the will of God. It belongs, 
 therefore, to the nature of the case that a power 
 other than that of Self is wanted to “ persuade and 
 enable” the man to turn and yield to God. Only 
 God can operate effectively on the spirit of man ; 
 and this He does by His own Holy Spirit (John i. 12 ; 
 Tit. iii. 5). At the moral crises of life only two 
 persons exist, God and the Man. It is unspeakably 
 solemn, and no stranger dare intermeddle. It be¬ 
 hoves even persons officially concerned as pastors, 
 or those profoundly interested through human affec¬ 
 tion, as parents, to be well aware that the only 
 power which can operate is that of the Holy Spirit, 
 and to be on their guard accordingly lest they 
 hinder where they meant to help. 
 
 2. The Method. —Probably no wiser statement 
 of the Spirit’s dealing with a soul has ever been 
 penned than the answer to the question on “ Effec¬ 
 tual Calling ” in our Shorter Catechism. “ Effectual 
 calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, con¬ 
 vincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our 
 minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our 
 wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace 
 Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the Gospel.” 
 This, with its leading proof passages (Ezek. xxxvi. 
 26, 27 ; John vi. 44 ; Phil. ii. 13 ; 2 Tim. i. 9), forms 
 one of the most perfect specimens of practical 
 theology which exist in literature. At the same 
 time it will be misusing it if we attempt to force all 
 
42 
 
 CHRIS TIAN CHAR A CTER: 
 
 experience through the precise stages here laid 
 down ; and it will be serious error if we question 
 the validity of an experience in which they are not 
 clearly marked. Fundamentally the movement of 
 the human spirit Godward is in two parallel lines, 
 increasing sense of man’s need, increasing percep¬ 
 tion of God’s grace. When these two come to their 
 appropriate issue, the soul has found Christ, or been 
 found of Him. How the Spirit deepens the sense 
 of need, and illuminates the soul with the sufficiency 
 of Christ, varies from case to case, and belongs to 
 the secret which binds God and His child together. 
 Conversion takes place when there dawns upon the 
 heart that double discovery, to which one of our 
 hymns (No. 279) gives simple and pathetic ex¬ 
 pression : 
 
 “ O, Saviour, I have nought to plead, 
 
 In earth beneath, or heaven above, 
 
 But just my own exceeding need, 
 
 And thy exceeding love.” 
 
 3. The Act. —At no point in man’s relation to 
 God is he merely passive. As he is a responsible 
 agent, there is always an act of his, strength for 
 which God ceaselessly supplies by His Spirit 
 required for securing the result. No man is ever 
 brought into personal relation to Christ save 
 through an act of his own will. This act is Faith. 
 In the nature of the case no definition of faith can 
 ever be complete. In it the whole personality of 
 man is engaged, and by it the whole personal life is 
 profoundly affected. Christ and the man are face 
 to face. The man under constraint of the Spirit of 
 God, yet acting on his own responsibility, abandons 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 43 
 
 his position of alienation from God, and passes over 
 to Christ. Such an act is too marvellous, summing 
 up as it does all the man’s past, inaugurating and 
 determining all his future, to be compressed into a 
 formula. It includes trust, the fiducia of the 
 Reformers, the burden of all evangelical appeal; 
 repentance, which is the same act as faith, looked 
 at from the terminus a quo rather than the terminus 
 ad quern ; decision, appearing under this aspect in 
 some of the most remarkable of the Biblical bio¬ 
 graphies, e.g., Moses, Ruth, Mary, and, in sadder 
 sense, Lot, and the rich young Ruler; appropriation 
 (Rom. xiii. 14) and consecration (Acts xxvii. 23), 
 which are the keynotes of that movement associated 
 with the convention at Keswick and the writings of 
 Andrew Murray, which has done much to quicken 
 the life of the Church in recent days. However 
 defined or described, Faith issues in two facts of 
 spiritual experience. The first is Justification 
 (Gal. ii. 16, and frequently in Paul’s Epistles), 
 relief from condemnation, and possession of right¬ 
 eousness. The second is Life in Christ (Gal. ii. 20, 
 and everywhere in Paul and John), personal vital 
 union to Christ, of whose closeness and intimacy 
 things are said in Scripture which move us to 
 wonder and praise. He who was once, in evil 
 sense, Self-determined is now Christ-determined ; 
 once an alien, now he is a citizen of the Kingdom, 
 its servant and heir. From the point of view of 
 religion, he is saved, or, more correctly and scrip- 
 turally, he is in process of being saved, his salvation 
 drawing nearer by every day he lives since he 
 believed (Rom. xiii. 11). From the point of view 
 
44 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 of Christian ethic, Christian character has begun to 
 be formed in him. 
 
 B. THE TRAINING OF THE NEW LIFE: 
 
 GOD’S MEANS. —From this too brief consideration 
 of the sacred experience, commonly known as “ con¬ 
 version,” a term worn sadly threadbare, one great 
 feature emerges, viz., that it is a beginning, that 
 certainly, but that only. Without a beginning, no 
 progress, is a commonplace. With a beginning 
 merely, no arrival, is also a commonplace, yet prac¬ 
 tically often forgotten. 
 
 That experience in which personal relationship 
 is established between Christ and the man, most 
 blessed and glorious as it undoubtedly is, is not 
 the terminus. The salvation to which it introduces 
 the believer has but begun. Its consummation is 
 yet to come (Rom. xiii. n). The interval between 
 the time when we believe and the time when salva¬ 
 tion is complete is occupied not merely in the 
 maintenance of a certain standing, but also in 
 an actual history, the growth and development of 
 character, the maturing of faculty and ripening of 
 experience, the increase of service. God does not 
 take the soul He saves and lay it, as the keeper of 
 a museum might do a fossil, in some safe place. 
 He saves it with a view to preparing it for use. He 
 never ceases His operation upon it, but takes daily 
 pains with it, till He have fashioned it for Himself. 
 What means God uses for the discipline of character 
 in any one individual it is not possible to state. No 
 biography, however complete, no autobiography, 
 however honest, could render it in full. There is an 
 individuality and distinctiveness in God’s dealings 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 45 
 
 with each human being which defies analysis, and 
 makes at once the sacredness and the interest of 
 spiritual life. All men are subjected, however, to 
 three grand modes of discipline, to which reference 
 must be made. 
 
 i. Temptation. —“ God cannot be tempted with 
 evil, and He tempteth no one;” James i. 13. We 
 are tempted by evil. What evil is in essence and 
 origin is for theology to discuss. The practical 
 consequences are much the same, even if we deny a 
 personal source of evil, though probably a growing 
 experience of life will incline even the most sceptical 
 to revise their early incredulity, and incline to the 
 conviction that the phenomena of temptation are 
 explicable only on the supposition of a Satanic 
 agency. Temptation to evil, therefore, does not 
 come from God. At the same time, temptation is 
 used by God as an instrument in His hand, and 
 wholly under His control, for the discipline of 
 Christian character. This is the presupposition of 
 all experience of temptation in Christian life. It is 
 not a thing foreign to Christian experience arising 
 from fate or chance. It belongs to the divine dis¬ 
 cipline that is shaping our lives. This at once de¬ 
 livers us from despair. Temptation is in God’s 
 hand. It will not exceed the severity He sees 
 needful. It will never make sin inevitable. Always 
 there will be a way of escape which the eye of a 
 trained and observant faith will see ; 1 Cor. x. T3. 
 
 From this point of view let us consider certain 
 outstanding features of this discipline, (a.) Its pos¬ 
 sibility as an element of Christian experience. If a 
 man be truly regenerate, it may be asked, how can 
 
46 
 
 CHRIS TIAN CHA RA CTER: 
 
 he be subjected to the pressure of evil ? Here let 
 us grasp two clear facts. First, Sin is a broken 
 power. We are not under its dominion ; Rom. vi. 
 14. The wonderful 6th chapter of Romans rings out 
 this note of victory. Second, it is never necessary 
 to yield to temptation. If it were necessary, such 
 yielding would not be sin. We cannot exaggerate 
 the Christian privilege in this aspect of it; where it 
 has been forgotten we need to be reminded of it. 
 When we have placed our privilege, however, as 
 high as the Bible permits, we have not yet got beyond 
 the reach of temptation, and never shall get, so long 
 as we remain in this world. 
 
 Consider the position of the Christian. It is true 
 he has now entered the Kingdom of God. God’s 
 will has been accepted by him as the supreme regu¬ 
 lative principle of his life. It is true that he has 
 admitted Christ into the centre of his being, and 
 that his life is rooted in Christ. But this does not 
 mean that from the whole domain of his being, 
 character, and life, evil has been wholly expelled 
 so as to be no longer a malign influence upon him. 
 Still less does it mean that he can no longer feel the 
 pressure of peril from the world in which he lives, 
 with which he comes into such manifold contact, and 
 by which he is influenced in so many ways. Rather 
 the fact of his being a subject of the Kingdom of 
 God, and of having Christ as the centre of his life, 
 makes the pressure of evil the more intense. Sin, 
 violently extruded from the centre of his spiritual 
 nature, returns upon him in great and terrible reac¬ 
 tion. So far from its being true that a Christian as 
 such ought not to feel the pressure of evil, the fact 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 47 
 
 is that only the Christian can feel it in its intensity. 
 The 7th chapter of the Romans, following upon the 
 6th, brings out this phase of Christian experience, 
 which many a soul, sore beset, has read as its own. 
 The point at issue is, Shall the Self, once yielded to 
 Christ, be subjected again to the dominion of sin. 
 To produce this result the forces of evil are mar¬ 
 shalled with a malignity, force, and subtlety, that 
 suggest, if they do not prove, Satanic agency. To 
 test and confirm the reality of the acceptance of 
 Christ, temptation is ordained, used, and measured 
 by God. 
 
 (b.) Its Forms. —These, of course, are infinitely 
 varied, and defy enumeration. Yet we can distin¬ 
 guish certain directions towards which the forces of 
 evil would conduct us. First .—To the commission 
 of old sins. Our characters have been weakened by 
 certain sins in time past. Certain habits have been 
 formed. Certain tendencies have been developed. 
 Now, therefore, when we would fain go and sin no 
 more, it is along the line of these old sins that the 
 forces of evil run with most virulent power, and 
 assail us with even greater vehemence than for¬ 
 merly. Allow evil its free course, and it deals with 
 us almost gently. Resist it, and it rages against us 
 with demoniac fury. Intemperance, lustfulness, pro¬ 
 fanity, bad temper, are conspicuous examples of this. 
 Probably no Christian would ever seriously conclude 
 to tolerate such giant evils. It is otherwise with less 
 conspicuous faults. Many of us find the task of 
 coping with them irksome, and so allow them to 
 remain. Thus sin re-establishes itself, and the char¬ 
 acter, which should have been a harmonious whole 
 
48 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 is disorganised, distorted, and enfeebled. Second .— 
 To the neglect of revealed duty. The experience of a 
 Christian is meant to be a progressive discovery and 
 an ever-increasing fulfilment of duty. Every revela¬ 
 tion of duty, however, is attended, as its shadow, 
 by the opposing power of evil. Between the man 
 and his obedience stands the evil, which is simply 
 the sin of his past, seeking, partly by seduction and 
 partly by threatening, to dissuade him from its per¬ 
 formance. The struggle lies between the right, with 
 which the man is identified, and which he is bound 
 to achieve, and the evil with which he was 
 once identified, and which now seeks again 
 to bring him into bondage. Examples of this 
 occur in the moral history of every day, as we rise 
 toward the good and beautiful, which dawns ever 
 more perfectly on our vision. If for any pain or 
 trouble we decline the upward step, we pay the 
 penalty of having the vision itself withdrawn, of 
 being deprived of its inspiration, and being left to 
 the lower level we have preferred. Character which 
 ought to be progressive becomes stationary; and in 
 morals to be stationary is to retrograde. We cannot 
 decline the highest, when we see it, without losing, 
 not only it, but the moral position at which we stood 
 when we made the refusal. The great and dramatic 
 instances of this temptation occur in times of perse¬ 
 cution. The evil arises, incarnated in the inquisitor, 
 to bar the progress of the soul toward the light. 
 The history of such times illustrates the moral situ¬ 
 ation, both by noble instances of constancy, and by 
 the sorrowful cases of lapsing, and the consequent 
 deterioration of character on the part of those who 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 49 
 
 yield. Third. —To the denial of the Faith. The 
 reaction of evil reaches here its intensest force. 
 Christian character is constituted by faith in Christ. 
 Precisely at this point, therefore, does temptation 
 most fiercely assail the Christian. As we have 
 pointed out of Temptation, in general, so let us 
 now insist with regard to this phase of it, that 
 it is discipline, ordered and restrained by God. 
 Doubt is not sin. There is, of course, a flippant 
 doubt born of conceit, and a dishonest doubt, 
 which is a mere device to excuse sin. But 
 doubt may be, and often is, the bitter experience 
 of genuine Christian life. Christ is the centre of 
 life and character. If, therefore, the soul can be 
 detached from Christ, evil will have triumphed. 
 It is not the feeblest hold of Christ that is sub¬ 
 jected to this strain. Rather is it the strongest, 
 which thus provokes recoil towards unbelief. The 
 great Biblical example is Job, whom doubt pursued 
 to the very citadel of his faith. He was confronted 
 by the terrible possibility of antagonism between 
 God and his conscience. Into this all doubt ultim¬ 
 ately concentrates. To have the highest instincts 
 set in opposition to what we have heard of God is 
 torture unutterable, for, if antagonism were really 
 proved, it would mean the destruction of the moral 
 universe, utter spiritual anarchy. To such discipline 
 often the finest souls are subjected. It is a time 
 most critical, requiring utmost patience, on the part 
 of all friends and counsellors, and specially on the 
 part of those thus tempted. The issue depends on 
 the hearing of the ear being replaced by the seeing 
 of the eye, Job xlii. 5, 6. The conclusion may not 
 
 D 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 50 
 
 be the removal of speculative difficulties, but it will 
 be the revelation of a spiritual relationship, to whose 
 unfoldings the speculative solutions may be safely 
 entrusted. 
 
 (c.) Methods by which it is to be met. The assault 
 of evil requires three lines of action on the part of 
 the assailed. First .—The presence of evil must be 
 detected. The requirement here is self-knowledge, 
 1 Cor. ix. 26. The whole field of character must 
 be minutely, carefully, and constantly kept under 
 observation. Evil has already won the victory, if it 
 can escape observation and intrench itself in some 
 unnoticed weakness, some unconsidered trespass 
 or neglect. Most wisely, therefore, must we fight, 
 learning by dint of self-examination where evil is 
 likely to assail us, at what points our character 
 needs strengthening, and so concentrating our 
 efforts towards the conquest of definite evils, and 
 the attainment of special excellencies. 
 
 Second .—Occasions of evil must be avoided. Our 
 duty here is careful avoidance of situations or cir¬ 
 cumstances, into which the call of God does not 
 lead, where we know evil influences will be brought 
 to bear against us. We are to watch, to survey the 
 territory ahead through which we proposed to move. 
 Inasmuch also as our foresight is limited and our 
 ignorance great, to the exercise of watching must 
 be added that of praying, lest, being left to our¬ 
 selves, we should walk into an ambush, Matt, 
 xxvi. 41. 
 
 It may even become our duty, by violent and 
 painful effort, to cast away from us things not 
 necessarily evil in themselves, which, however, so 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 SI 
 
 operate on inherent tendencies in our own nature, 
 as to become occasions of inevitable fall. The 
 attainment of character is so high an aim, that 
 no sacrifice of anything merely pleasurable is too 
 great to make for it, Matt. v. 29, 30; Mark ix. 
 43-48. Our natural instinct is to deal very 
 tenderly with sins that are pleasant, and to find 
 many reasons for indulging ourselves in them. 
 But, if the character whose source is Christ, is to 
 grow up into His likeness, we must learn to be 
 absolutely relentless, and to treat ourselves with the 
 utmost rigour. Our Lord’s words in the above 
 passages are startling, as they cleave through all 
 delusions and reveal the breadth and depth of 
 the alternative. The Christianity of Christ is 
 never easy. 
 
 Third .—The forces of evil must be resisted. By 
 such means the actual conflict may often be avoided. 
 Frequently, however, in spite of watchfulness and 
 the utmost care, the forces of evil close with us, 
 and put our spiritual being under severe strain. 
 
 Three points have to be attended to. First , small 
 temptations have to be dealt with as seriously as 
 great ones. By every temptation yielded to, the 
 force of evil is increased, and our power of resist¬ 
 ance decreased. It is of utmost importance that no 
 known evil be permitted to obtain permanent foot¬ 
 ing within the domain which should be wholly under 
 the sovereignty of Christ. Christian character can¬ 
 not be established in one or two brilliant feats, but 
 must be secured by a long series of obscure and 
 unnoticed victories. Second ,, the combatant who 
 strikes the first blow gains profound moral advan- 
 
52 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHAR A CTER: 
 
 tage. It is essential to the completeness of the 
 victory that evil be resisted as soon as perceived. 
 As in the old story of the Fall, argument is fatal. 
 There is nothing to be done with sin save to resist 
 it, and sin resisted is sin overcome (James iv. 7). 
 Third ,’ let no mistake be made as to the condition 
 of victory. Morality cannot be separated from re¬ 
 ligion. It is a grave tactical blunder to attempt to 
 fight the enemy in our own strength. Character 
 can only be formed as the life we have in Christ 
 is allowed to pervade our being and give us the 
 strength required. “ Remember,” says a wise 
 spiritual guide, “ that it is not you who are to 
 conquer, but He who is to conquer in you.” (No 
 wiser or more beautiful writing in Christian ethics 
 is to be found than in the chapters on temptation 
 in Goulburn’s “ Thoughts on Personal Religion.”) 
 That this strength can be had, and that it is suffi¬ 
 cient, is as much matter of experience as the exist¬ 
 ence and efficiency of any force in the physical 
 universe (1 John v. 4 ; 2 Cor. ii. 14; Ephes. vi. 16). 
 
 It is plain that temptation thus met and resisted 
 becomes in God’s hands a valuable means in the 
 discipline of character. By temptation we are 
 trained to detect sin when it appears, whatever its 
 disguise, and to hate it for its moral vileness and its 
 disastrous consequences. By temptation we obtain 
 needed exercise for our moral powers, which are 
 thus strengthened not merely for resistance of evil, 
 but for attainment of good. By temptation we are 
 led to more practical realisation of the resources we 
 have in Christ. As the wind-blast helps to root 
 the tree deeper in the soil, so temptation causes us 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 53 
 
 to send the roots of character deeper into Christ. 
 Without temptation character would be sapless, 
 pithless, always immature and ineffective. We 
 find the strain severe. Let us rejoice, since this 
 is evidence of moral gain. 
 
 “ Was the trial sore ? 
 
 Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second time ! 
 
 Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
 And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
 
 And so be pedestailed in triumph.” 
 
 Browning — Ring and the Book ; The Pope. 
 
 2. Suffering. —The mystery of pain must always 
 remain dark to the human intellect. When we 
 survey the pain of nature as it waits for the mani¬ 
 festation of the sons of God, as we read the page of 
 history dark with tragedies of crime and agony, as 
 we open the daily newspaper and hear the cry of a 
 nation weltering in blood, we feel we are in presence 
 of a problem for which neither reason nor revelation 
 provides a complete solution. The only clue we 
 possess is the teaching of scripture that pain, even 
 in nature, connects itself with sin in man ; that, 
 therefore, redemption contains within itself the pro¬ 
 mise of deliverance, not for man only, but for the 
 realm of which he is head. It is different, however, 
 when we turn to the discipline of character. Here 
 we are at no loss to discern in suffering one of the 
 means whereby God prepares a soul for the highest 
 moral attainment; and here also we find a ray of 
 light shining into the darkness of the larger pro¬ 
 blem. For if pain play so noble a part in the 
 education and development of the individual, can 
 
54 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHAR A C TER: 
 
 we not conceive, dimly at least, how it should serve 
 in the career of the wider organism, which includes 
 all men and all created things, the same lofty end ? 
 Pain is no evil to the individual. Why should it 
 be mere evil in the experience of humanity and the 
 world at large ? Confining our attention now to 
 suffering as an element in the discipline of char¬ 
 acter, we observe the following points. ( a.) The 
 Forms of Suffering. — First .—Chastening (Heb. xii. 
 n ; Rev. iii. 19). Here the occasion of infliction of 
 pain is some sin in the sufferer. This does not neces¬ 
 sarily imply that the pain follows punctually on the 
 offence, or corresponds in outward form with the 
 offence. We are not, therefore, in every case to 
 suppose that we can trace the connection. But we 
 are able, from our general knowledge of ourselves, 
 to say, whether we have been allowing ourselves 
 in some trespass or neglect, which has rendered 
 chastening a necessary course of dealing with us on 
 the part of One who has the interests of our character 
 at heart. If this chastening involve others in grief 
 or pain, as it frequently will, the discovery it makes 
 of our own sin is the more keen and terrible. 
 
 Second .—Trial (John ix. 3). Sufferings have not 
 always their explanation in some special sin. To 
 suppose that every sorrow we endure has its root 
 in some sin we have committed is to do dishonour 
 to God, and to miss the point of His discipline. 
 Growth is more than the mere checking of one 
 sin after another. Suffering, therefore, has a nobler 
 end than merely to check off each sin as it is 
 committed. What suffering is chastisement, and 
 what is trial, cannot be determined by us in 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 55 
 
 reference to any sufferer. Even with respect to 
 ourselves, we cannot always fix definitely. God’s 
 means of discipline are inarticulate. We need to 
 give earnest heed, until the meaning disengage 
 itself from the circumstances and fill our mind with 
 its lessons. Third .—Suffering for righteousness’ sake 
 (Matt. v. 10-12 ; x. 39). Suffering of this description 
 is inevitable for us, living in the sphere we occupy, 
 where evil, though defeated, rages. What Christ 
 did in supreme sense, encounter the evil of the 
 world, and defeat it in the very moment when it 
 broke upon Him, the Christian has to do in so 
 far as he follows Christ. Care has to be taken 
 here that we should discern the Figure of Christ 
 as He goes before us, and not lose Him in the 
 mist of our own fancies. Many have followed, 
 even to the stake, a mere wraith, the shadow of 
 their own pride and superstition. Many daily 
 pride themselves on faithfulness, when the source 
 of their suffering is mere conceit and ignorance. 
 Be not martyrs by mistake. The only guide is 
 the Spirit of God, given to those who live near 
 to God. Whenever in that light we see Christ, 
 we must range ourselves beside Him and confess 
 Him before men. Life thus becomes a daily martyr¬ 
 dom, from which, even in most commonplace sur¬ 
 roundings, the dignity of pain is not often awanting. 
 
 ( 3 .) The Functions of Suffering .—There is no 
 aspect of character which is not refined and elevated 
 by suffering, no Christian virtue which does not 
 derive from suffering the greater part of its power 
 and beauty. A complete description of the work 
 accomplished by suffering is therefore impossible. 
 
56 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 The following points lie on the surface. First .— 
 It acts as antidote and prophylactic in reference 
 to Sin. Physical pain is the main preservative of 
 physical life, our chief means of knowing what 
 hurts us, and of guiding us to the avoidance of 
 danger. In full analogy with this, the law that 
 connects pain with sin sets us on our guard, and 
 directs us in a careful avoidance of sources of 
 moral evil. Make your fears your safeguard, is 
 advice nobler and wiser than at first glance ap¬ 
 pears. Second .—It tests and purifies the character; 
 i Peter i. 6, 7. It acts as fire, sifting out loose 
 elements from the life, and strengthening and 
 confirming all that has its roots in Christ, and 
 has affinities with His perfect nature. Without 
 this discipline, character would be unstable, and 
 growth uncertain. Third .—It prepares and fits for 
 service. This it did even for Christ ; Heb. ii. 10 ; 
 v. 8; ii. 18; iv. 15. Much more in our case. It 
 does so by reducing the vigour of selfish ambitions, 
 by separating us from circumstances which would 
 divert us from the true end of life, and by uniting 
 us in sympathy to our fellow-men. No educa¬ 
 tion is comparable to that of pain. The world 
 loses its glamour. Men draw us out of self by the 
 attraction of their need. The worker is endowed 
 with a new faculty to discern the need and meet it 
 with ready helpfulness. Fourth .—It enters as cor- 
 rective into lofty privilege, and prevents rare experi¬ 
 ences from becoming sources of temptation ; 2 Cor. 
 xii. 7. A thorn in the flesh, however much it may 
 be a messenger of Satan, is in truth a divinely 
 appointed agency in keeping the soul humble and 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 57 
 
 near the Cross. Fifth .—It forms the condition of 
 entrance into the fellowship of Christ, and thus 
 into possession of spiritual power ; Rom. viii. 17 ; 
 Phil. iii. 10; 1 Peter iv. 13. Here we touch on 
 the depths of the mystery of our relation to Christ. 
 Christ’s suffering is vicarious, and as such it was 
 the crowning revelation of God. His sufferings 
 are continued in the persons of His people ; Col. i. 
 24. In them, they serve the same end, being a 
 continued proof and illustration to the world of 
 the love of God in Christ. At the same time 
 those who thus suffer are being brought near to 
 God, are entering into sympathy with the divine 
 purpose of mercy, and are drawing from the divine 
 fulness the grace of life. Without suffering we 
 could know neither God nor Jesus Christ whom 
 He has sent. 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that suffering is in itself 
 most precious, serving ends unattainable with¬ 
 out it. 
 
 (c.) The Acceptance of Suffering .—Suffering is 
 accordingly, a divine appointment in our lives. It 
 is, as has been well said, a vocation, the highest of 
 all vocations, and is wrongly estimated, when it is 
 received with irritation or anger, as an interference 
 with our vocations. This conception of suffering 
 as an element in the divine plan of life for the 
 Christian lies deep in the New Testament. The 
 first Epistle of Peter is full of it, e.g., ii. 21. It is 
 perhaps not altogether fanciful to regard the pre¬ 
 dominance of this thought in his Epistle as con¬ 
 nected with his Master’s express charge to him, 
 John xxi. 18, 19 : “When He had spoken this,” viz., 
 
5« 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 the prediction of a painful death, “ He saith unto 
 him, Follow Me.” This Apostle gloried in action, 
 but the divine plan designated him to glorify God 
 chiefly in suffering. 
 
 The whole doctrine of suffering is condensed in 
 our Lord’s saying, Luke ix. 23, and parallels. Here 
 it is distinctly announced as a necessary element in 
 all discipleship. The Cross is to be taken, to be 
 embraced in an act of will. Only as thus freely 
 undertaken will suffering discharge its varied func¬ 
 tions in the discipline of character. Resisted, 
 struggled against, with attempts to evade it, and a 
 rebellious spirit under its imposition, it becomes, like 
 all rejected gifts of God, an element in the harden¬ 
 ing of the heart, and the deterioration of character. 
 There is nothing more pitiful than pain rendered 
 fruitless by the revolt of the will. 
 
 A review of life ought to show us something at 
 least of the place and value of suffering, should lead 
 us to suspect a plan of life from which pain, dis¬ 
 appointment, and sorrow are eliminated, and should 
 warn us not to attempt to construct such a scheme 
 of life for ourselves. We should 
 
 “ Welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth’s smoothness rough ; 
 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! 
 
 Be our joys three parts pain, 
 
 Strive and hold cheap the strain ; 
 
 Learn nor account the pang ; dare never grudge the throe.” 
 
 —Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 Such a conception of the value of suffering and of 
 the welcome we should accord it depends for its 
 reasonableness and its profitableness on the Christ- 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 59 
 
 ian view of life. Our acceptance of suffering, there¬ 
 fore, must always be religious in its action. 
 
 It is to be accompanied by three activities of soul, 
 each directed Godward—First, submission (i Peter 
 v. 6) ; Second, patience (James v. io, 11); Third, 
 trust (Rom. viii. 28). These are the spiritual con¬ 
 ditions of profit in suffering, and not of profit only, 
 but of comfort. We here rise above the merely 
 moral point of view. God is not merely an operator, 
 working up material into a certain form. He is the 
 Father. Thus with suffering He gives comfort, 
 which, when the suffering is duly accepted, flows 
 unstinted into the weary heart, taking away all 
 repining, bitterness, or despair, replacing these with 
 peace and joy (2 Cor. i. 4, 5 ; Rom. v. 3). 
 
 3. Work : Results for Character.— It is 
 important to notice the function of work in the 
 discipline of character. It is usual to quote 
 Genesis iii. 17-19 as a curse. It might, with equal 
 appropriateness, be studied as a blessing. Work 
 as such belongs both to the sinless and the sinful 
 stage of human history. In the sinful stage it no 
 doubt is accompanied by peculiar hardships, but 
 these find their explanation in the revolt of man’s 
 will, and the consequent disorder of his character. 
 Work, however hard and difficult, is a necessary 
 element in the education of man, and as such is an 
 appointment of wisdom and mercy. Like suffering, 
 work influences the growth of character in ways 
 too numerous and subtle to admit of enumeration. 
 Observe, however, how work corrects certain out¬ 
 standing defects, and superinduces the correspond¬ 
 ing excellency. 
 
6o 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 (a.) Humility. — Man’s first attitude towards 
 nature is an arrogant demand that it shall yield 
 him satisfaction. Labour teaches him another 
 lesson. In order to successful work he must 
 humble himself to be a pupil in Nature’s school, 
 must lay aside the presumptions of his ignorance, 
 observe the laws of the material with which he 
 works. He can only work as he yields himself to 
 these laws, and by work he is brought into harmony 
 with them. These laws, moreover, take him be¬ 
 yond themselves into a realm of law, of which he is, 
 and ought to be, the subject. To be part of an in¬ 
 finite whole, to be an intelligent citizen in an ordered 
 universe, to be a willing agent in its great design, is 
 the highest dignity of man ; and this dignity work 
 enables him to attain. 
 
 (< 5 .) Perseverance. The deepest instinct of sinful 
 man is sheer unmitigated laziness. The savage, 
 who makes his wife work for him, and is in some 
 races so idle that he makes his wife feed him, is the 
 typical natural man. His demand is that things 
 shall be his without labour. The primitive laziness 
 is seen in the gambling mania, whether on the turf 
 or the stock exchange. This ruling idea is to acquire 
 possessions without labour. The necessity of labour 
 reveals a higher truth. No possessions, whether 
 material, intellectual, or spiritual are so truly ours, 
 or so readily satisfy us, as those for which we have 
 toiled, in which we have invested our personal 
 powers of body, mind, and spirit. When we enter 
 on such possessions, we are gaining an enlarged 
 and ennobled nature. It is matter of common 
 observation that possessions acquired without labour 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 61 
 
 deteriorate the character. True wealth can be 
 gained and maintained only by work. Even in 
 case of inherited wealth a man can only serve him¬ 
 self its heir by using it as an instrument in work. 
 Without work, it will be an inheritance of curse. 
 The miseries of the “idle rich ” have passed into a 
 proverb. 
 
 (c.) Concentration. Only less natural and less 
 culpable than idleness is unregulated activity. 
 Energy is spent now in one direction now in another; 
 and no greater permanent result is achieved. Along 
 with this dissipation of energy goes disintegration 
 of character. There can be no moral growth where 
 there is no unity of effort. Only by limiting the 
 exercise of power can either physical or moral 
 development be successfully carried on. The re¬ 
 straints of the position in which we find ourselves, 
 the exigencies of labour which absorb so much time 
 and attention, form needed and valuable moral 
 discipline. 
 
 {d.) Sympathy. The concentration required by 
 work would become an occasion of sin in making 
 the workman selfish and blind to the interests 
 of others, did not work itself supply the antidote. 
 He cannot do his own piece of work, without keeping 
 in view the labour of some other man, whose work 
 is needed to complete his. He is thus taught the 
 deep moral lesson that no man can live unto him¬ 
 self, that if he attempt it he must die. In work, a 
 man is an instrument in a wider good than his own. 
 His own good, in fact, is the wider good. The 
 selfishness which sets man against man, trade 
 against trade, men against masters, is not only a 
 
62 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 crime, but a blunder, and entails endless loss to 
 those who make selfish gain the sole end of labour. 
 
 ( e .) Increased capacity. The richest gain of work 
 is skill. That a man should live or grow rich by 
 labour is a by-product. The real advantage lies in 
 the increase of faculty, fitting the workman for finer 
 and more perfect workmanship. All good work is 
 done by the workman’s losing sight of ulterior ends, 
 and making the perfection of the work his sole ruling 
 purpose. When he is finished the result is good, 
 and he himself is ready for something higher. This 
 moral lesson of work extends to life as a whole. We 
 are here, not to acquire possessions other than 
 this, higher power for higher work hereafter. This, 
 and no more than this, God gives us : 
 
 “ Here work enough to watch 
 “ The Master work, and catch 
 “ Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.” 
 
 Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 We understand, therefore, the conditions under 
 which work can discharge for us these functions. It 
 must be accepted in whatever form it comes to us, 
 and discharged with equal fidelity whatever its 
 apparent magnitude. This condition is laid down 
 in the two parables of the Talents, Matt. xxv. 16-30, 
 and the Pounds, Luke xix. 12-27, which with so 
 much in common have a distinct point in each. In 
 the Talents, the endowment of the workmen is dif¬ 
 ferent in each case, the fidelity is the same, and the 
 reward is the same. In the Pounds, the endow¬ 
 ment is the same in each case, the fidelity differs, 
 and the reward differs in proportion to the fidelity. 
 In both parables the reward consists in ampler 
 
ITS DISCIPLINE. 
 
 63 
 
 opportunity of service. There is no higher morality 
 than absolute fidelity to our station and its duties, 
 There is no higher moral attainment than that of 
 being “ a good and faithful servant.” By work, God 
 fits us to His hand. 
 
 Looking back over this sketch of the discipline of 
 character, we cannot miss the practical issue. God 
 takes us in hand. We are the clay, He the potter. 
 But we must not use this analogy to blind us to a 
 fundamental truth. We are personal beings, and 
 God deals with us as persons. Not even to bless us 
 will He derogate aught from our dignity as men. We 
 are never mere clay, or mere machines. We stand 
 free before God, either to accept or reject His 
 discipline. 
 
 “God, whose pleasure brought 
 Man into being, stands away 
 As it were a hand-breadth off, to give 
 Room for the newly-made to live, 
 
 And look at him from a place apart, 
 
 • •••••« 
 
 whose plan 
 
 Was to create man and then leave him 
 Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 
 
 But able to glorify Him too 
 
 As a mere machine could never do.” 
 
 Browning, Christmas Eve . 
 
 We are called on, therefore, to place ourselves 
 freely in His hand, that He may have His way with 
 us, and make of us what He would. This act implies 
 three elements. First, Surrender, Rom. vi. 13; 
 second, Intelligent recognition of the end in view, 
 and entire consecration to it, Phil. iii. 14 ; third, 
 Trust, that infinite love and wisdom devised the 
 
64 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 discipline, ordained its forms, and will preserve the 
 subject of it safe till the end be reached, 2 Tim. i. 12. 
 May teacher and class together be strengthened with 
 might by the Spirit to perform this glad and solemn 
 act of dedication, and offer the poet’s prayer :— 
 
 “ But I need, now as then 
 Thee, God, who mouldest men ! 
 
 And since, not even while the whirl was worst, 
 
 Did I, to the wheel of life, 
 
 With shapes and colours rife, 
 
 Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: 
 
 “ So take and use Thy work, 
 
 Amend what flaws may lurk, 
 
 What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim, 
 
 My times be in Thy hand ! 
 
 Perfect the cup as planned ! 
 
 Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same ! 
 
 Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 (For exposition of Browning’s conception of life I know nothing 
 better than “ Sermons from Browning, by Rev. F. Ealand, M.A. 
 London : Elliot Stock. A small but most helpful book.) 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CULTURE OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 
 
 We have hitherto been looking at Christian 
 character from the point of view of the divine 
 source in which it originated, and the divine 
 guidance by which it is developed. We are now 
 to consider it from the point of view of the indi¬ 
 vidual in whom it appears, of whose personal being 
 it is the expression. We can never neglect, as we 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 65 
 
 can never logically comprehend, the double aspect, 
 divine and human, in the personal life of man. 
 Character in one aspect is made by God ; in another 
 it is self-made. Neglect the former and we become 
 mere moralists. Neglect the latter and we become 
 unethical mystics, or antinomian fanatics. The 
 divine and the human can never be brought together 
 in a formula. But in studying the one we ought 
 never to forget the other, and in actual life the two 
 must appear in the practical unity of character. 
 If, therefore, in what has now to be said we speak 
 mainly of our responsibilities in respect to the 
 making of character, let us take with us, as abiding 
 presupposition, all that we have learnt of God’s 
 power and discipline, in producing the result of 
 ripe Christian character. 
 
 In this chapter we take the leading departments 
 of our constitution as men, and endeavour to see 
 how each of them enters into our moral life, and 
 how, through our behaviour in respect to them, our 
 character is built up. 
 
 A. THE BODY.— I. ITS IMPORTANCE FOR 
 Christian Character. —Man is not pure spirit. 
 The abstract separation of spiritual and material, 
 with the consequent contempt of the material, was 
 the rock upon which Greek Philosophy split. When 
 applied practically this wide distinction has been 
 fraught with disastrous consequences. If the body 
 be absolutely distinct from the soul, two ways of 
 treating it are open. Either it may be viewed as 
 the enemy of man’s true life, and maltreated accord¬ 
 ingly, or it may be looked upon as wholly indifferent 
 to the moral life, and indulged in all its lusts and 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARA CTER: 
 
 passions. Both these extremes have been actually 
 practised, even in the history of the Christian 
 Church. Both arise from the presupposition, for 
 which there is no support in Scripture or in 
 reason, that Man is spiritual only, and that his 
 body is something lying outside the domain of his 
 spiritual life. We sometimes speak of the body as 
 the vesture of the soul, by which it makes itself 
 manifest, or as the instrument of the soul, by which 
 it carries out its purposes ; but we must be careful 
 not to imagine that the body is to the soul as cloth¬ 
 ing is to the body or a tool to the hand. We may 
 lay aside our clothing or set down our tools, and 
 yet remain ourselves, intact. We cannot so treat 
 our bodies. They are part of ourselves. We can¬ 
 not part with them and remain complete person¬ 
 alities. Christianity does not recognise man as a 
 Ghost or Shade. Its doctrine of immortality must 
 be taken in immediate connection with its doctrine 
 of the resurrection of the body. The body is in¬ 
 stinct with the soul. The soul is incarnate in the 
 body. Health is commonly defined as mens sa?ia 
 in cor pore sano. Holiness might be defined in the 
 same way as a state of complete manhood, in which 
 the whole man, body included, is wholly trans¬ 
 formed, and raised to the design of his creation. 
 To suppose that Paul’s contribution to theology is 
 the conception of a resurrection of Christ so 
 spiritual in character that the historic event in 
 Joseph’s garden may be left an open question, is 
 entirely to misconceive him. He is not a Greek 
 philosopher. He is working out the revelation of 
 redemption, and is teaching that that redemption 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 67 
 
 includes the body. If it does not, it has failed. 
 The famous 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians is not 
 a philosophic disquisition on the immortality of the 
 soul. It is an application of redemption to the 
 body. The body, accordingly, is not an outlying 
 territory which might be neglected, if only the 
 kingdom be established in the soul. Nor is it itself 
 an enemy which has to be crushed, before the king¬ 
 dom can be secure. It comes within the domain 
 of the kingdom. It has to be occupied by the King. 
 Its powers have to be dedicated to His service, and 
 trained for His perfect use. Let not the special 
 point of Rom. xii. 1 be forgotten. It is often ren¬ 
 dered, “ present ourselves as living sacrifices ” ; but 
 what Paul says, and means, is “ present our bodies? 
 This actual flesh and blood body is to be a sacrifice, 
 living, not dead, in the fulness of its function, laid 
 upon the Altar. It is plain, therefore, that the 
 culture of Christian character cannot proceed with¬ 
 out careful study of the body, and a most earnest 
 watchfulness in all the relations of life into which it 
 enters. 
 
 2. Bodily Sins. —Sin is, no doubt, an act of the 
 man, of his self-determining will. Sin resides there, 
 in the seat of the man’s responsibility. But the 
 various sides of his nature may in turn provide the 
 suggestion of evil, and the field for its operation. It 
 is open to the man to turn any part of his being 
 against the divine end which should govern the 
 whole complex constitution. 
 
 The body, therefore, is not itself sinful, and is not 
 to be hated or abused as though it were. It is not, 
 as General Gordon with his strong mvstical bias 
 
68 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 was wont to say, “ the life long foe ” of the soul. 
 Every affection, instinct, passion, of the body, is in 
 itself pure and good, but any one of them provides 
 scope and opportunity for man, in his self-will and 
 disobedience, to break the divine law of his being. 
 The specialty of the body, in this respect, is that the 
 cravings of the flesh are keener than those of other 
 aspects of our nature, and the pleasures connected 
 with their satisfaction of a more instant and obvious 
 kind. Hence temptations to sin in the body have 
 an impetuosity and brute force, most overwhelming 
 to the untried soul. It is to be observed also that 
 bodily habits tend to obtain a fixity and mastery of 
 a special, and often very terrible, kind. There is 
 no more pitiable object in the world than the man 
 who has suffered his will to be submerged beneath 
 the imperious rule of a physical habit. Drunken¬ 
 ness will occur at once as the outstanding instance 
 of this. Temptations to bodily sin occur with 
 greatest frequency and force in youth, when the 
 discipline of character has not yet brought the 
 various elements of our nature into their ordained 
 harmony ; and in seasons, such as deep dejection 
 or high excitement, when some powerful emotion 
 has overshadowed the supremacy of the will. At all 
 such times, there must be careful watching and 
 prompt action to cope with the force of evil 
 suggestion. 
 
 In the conquest of bodily sins the general prin¬ 
 ciples referred to above in speaking of temptation 
 (pp. 50-52) are applicable. To these may be added 
 the following more specific directions :— (a.) Clearly 
 understand the penalty of bodily sin .—All sin has 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 69 
 
 its appropriate penalty ; but in the case of bodily 
 sin the penalty is more obvious, is more dramatic in 
 its exact correspondence to the very form of the 
 offence, and follows more simply than in other 
 breaches of law. Bodily sins are of the kind that 
 go before men to judgment (1 Tim. v. 24). Abuse 
 the body, make it the instrument of self-indulgence, 
 and it becomes itself the instrument of our chastise¬ 
 ment. There is a terror about the inevitableness 
 with which suffering follows sin in the body which 
 is more tremendous than any invective of the 
 preacher. The solemn restraint, the absolute cer¬ 
 tainty of Galatians vi. 7, 8 is the most awful thing 
 in literature. “ One of the most short and telling 
 sermons I ever heard,” says Dr Wells, a “ was by a 
 friend who had charge of an hospital. Going round 
 his wards with him one Sabbath morning we came 
 to a young man whose secret sins had found him 
 out. As the doctor laid bare his hideous sores— 
 the sight was enough to sicken you—he said in a 
 slow and solemn tone, ‘ Be not deceived, God is not 
 mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap. 3 ‘ For’—still uncovering and dressing 
 the running sores—‘ he that soweth to the flesh, 
 shall of the flesh reap corruption.’ The poor man’s 
 face changed colour, his eyeballs grew larger, and I 
 felt as if I had been present at the last judgment.” 
 Add to this the fact, amply established by science, 
 that disease may be transmitted to posterity. In a 
 popular treatise on medicine, 5 the following State¬ 
 ns “ Bible Echoes,” p. 82. 
 
 b “ The Household Physician,” p. 6, by Dr J. Macgregor-Robert- 
 son. Blackie & Son. 
 
70 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 ment occurs :—“ A parent who may have inherited 
 a robust enough constitution may himself acquire a 
 disease, syphilis, for example, which he then hands 
 down to his child ; or by drunkenness or other ex¬ 
 cesses he may transmit a constitution, if not actually 
 diseased, at least very prone to disease.” The fol¬ 
 lowing example is also given :—“ First generation 
 — Immorality, depravity, alcoholic excess, and 
 moral degradation in the great-grandfather, who 
 was killed in a tavern brawl ; second generation— 
 Hereditary drunkenness, attacks of mania, ending 
 in general paralysis in the grandfather ; third genera¬ 
 tion—Sobriety, but tendencies to delusions, delusions 
 of persecutions, &c., and tendencies to homicide in 
 the father ; fourth generation—Defective intelli¬ 
 gence, first attack of mania at sixteen, stupidity, 
 ending in complete idiocy.” To be ourselves af¬ 
 flicted in body for our “ pleasant vices” is bad. To 
 hand on to generations yet unborn the consequences 
 of our deeds in the body is a thought from which 
 even the most hardened might recoil. Set this 
 between us and bodily excess. 
 
 (A) Get a soul-subduing sight of the guilt and 
 heinousness of bodily sin. — First .—It dishonours 
 God in His own image. By the fact of creation we 
 are bound to do justice to the whole of our complex 
 nature. Each element in it has its part to play in 
 that glorifying of God which is the end of our being. 
 It is our duty, therefore, to see that each element is 
 competent to play this part, and is set free to do so. 
 The body has its share in the glorifying of God. If 
 we divert it from this end, and use it for self-gratifi¬ 
 cation, if we so treat it that it becomes incapable of 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 7i 
 
 rendering this service of praise, we are insulting its 
 Maker in the grossest and most presumptuous way. 
 Second. —It is theft of God’s property. The general 
 obligation of creation becomes intensified from the 
 point of view of redemption. The broad fact is that 
 we are “not our own” (1 Cor. vi. 19 ; Rom. xiv. 7, 8). 
 We have no independent rights in any part of our 
 being. Our bodies are not our own. To treat them 
 as though they were, to make them instruments of 
 our own selfish purposes, is theft of a peculiarly 
 mean and disgraceful kind. We are content that 
 God should get our souls, about the “ salvation ” of 
 which we are occasionally anxious ; but our bodies 
 we require for ourselves as the instrument of our 
 pleasures ! We cannot so trifle with redemption. 
 Its immediate inference is that Christ is Lord of all. 
 To confess Him as such is condition of salvation 
 (Rom. x. 9). To deny Him in this His rightful 
 supremacy is to subvert the fundamental conditions 
 of salvation. There is only one thing to be done 
 with our members, viz., that they should be yielded 
 as “servants to righteousness” (Rom. vi. 19). To 
 employ them in any other service is sheer dis¬ 
 honesty. Third. —It is sacrilege. The spiritual func¬ 
 tion of the redeemed person has to be remembered. 
 God dwelt in the Temple of old as a symbol of His 
 dwelling in and with His redeemed and covenanted 
 people. When the shadow gave way to the sub¬ 
 stance, the place of the marble and golden Temple 
 was taken by the human beings redeemed and 
 brought into covenant with God. “ Ye are the 
 Temple of the living God” (2 Cor. vi. 16). We, in 
 the fulness of our human nature, are “ an habitation 
 
72 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 of God through the Spirit” (Ephes. ii. 22). The 
 thought is wonderful, unspeakable ; but there can 
 be no question as to the matter of fact. The im¬ 
 mediate consequences of the fact are obvious. To 
 admit any defilement into God’s Temple, to employ 
 His Temple for any other worship than His, is 
 sacrilege of the most guilty kind. This conception 
 of our being God’s Temple applies with special 
 force to our bodies. God inhabits us ; we inhabit 
 them; therefore they contain God. The thing is so 
 obvious that Paul turns upon those who sin in the 
 body with an indignant question—“ What! Know 
 ye not that your body is the Temple of the Holy 
 Ghost” (1 Cor. vi. 19). A bodily member prosti¬ 
 tuted to blasphemy, drunkenness, fornication, or 
 any unhallowed use, is a deadly crime against the 
 majesty and holiness of the Indwelling God. There 
 are many Christians who seem able to sin in the 
 body with a light heart. There are parts of the 
 country where alcoholic excess is not regarded as a 
 blemish on the character, even of persons eminent 
 for reputation of piety. Elsewhere, even fornication 
 is thought of with indulgence as a trifle. Such esti¬ 
 mates run counter to the plain teaching of the New 
 Testament, and exhibit an utterly inadequate con¬ 
 ception of what is involved in redemption. Let 
 young men especially lay it to heart that bodily sin 
 means dark deadly guilt, for which there will be a 
 a terrible reckoning, begun in this world, continued 
 in that which is to come. 
 
 (c.) Put in practice a wise and strenuous disci¬ 
 pline. —The general aim is self-mastery. We must 
 have the body a ready and fit instrument for the 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 73 
 
 divine will. The analogy of athletic exercises lies 
 on the surface ; and is used by Paul, i Cor. ix. 25- 
 27. As the athlete treats his body that it may lend 
 itself to his purpose, training it down till every 
 superfluous ounce of flesh be removed, and nothing 
 remain but the well-knit frame full of grace and 
 strength ; so for his higher ends ought the Chris¬ 
 tian athlete to treat his body, giving it sufficient 
 food and rest for his purpose, and being very care¬ 
 ful that it shall never be so pampered as to be a 
 hindrance in reaching the heavenly goal. This 
 general direction raises many questions of detail in 
 the settlement of which, as there is room for Chris¬ 
 tian liberty, so is there a special call for careful 
 study and wise consideration of all the elements in¬ 
 volved. The most pressing of all these questions is 
 that which concerns the use of alcohol. Technical 
 points as to whether alcohol is a food or a poison, as 
 to the efficacy of its use as a medicine, as to the 
 meaning of certain Hebrew and Greek words in the 
 Bible, and the customs of the Jews in ancient times, 
 may be left to specialists. The prominence given to 
 them in discussions of the subject is misleading. 
 The question for the individual lies wholly apart 
 from such matters. Two points are clear. (1) The 
 use of alcohol as a beverage involves risk to the 
 person partaking. (2) Alcohol is in society at large 
 a source of unspeakable evil, and is a prevailing 
 temptation to vast numbers of our fellow human 
 beings and fellow Christians. The Bible lays down 
 no legal command ; and therefore the Church ought 
 not to attempt to do so. But it may well be urged 
 upon the conscience of the individual to consider 
 
74 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARA CTER: 
 
 whether he ought not (a) for his own sake, (b) for 
 the sake of others, to abstain from the use of alcohol 
 as a beverage. Such arguments as that of Rom. 
 xiv. 15-23 bear very closely on the question, and the 
 conclusion to which they point seems strongly to 
 favour the practice of total abstinence. Whatever 
 be the theory of the matter, there can be no doubt 
 that for persons in full strength, who can do their 
 work on water, the use of alcohol is unnecessary 
 and undesirable. 
 
 Such questions may be disputable cases of con¬ 
 science. If, however, a lust tend to gain the mastery 
 over the will, there is no question as to the plain 
 duty. Paul’s habit was, in his own vigorous 
 language, to give his body a knock-down blow. If 
 the lust rises in war against the soul, there is 
 nothing to be done but hit out, straight from the 
 shoulder. Whatever else is permissible, this thing 
 must not be. So Joseph faced round on his tor¬ 
 mentor. “ How can I do this great wickedness, and 
 sin against God ? ” There is no room for debate. 
 There must be studious avoidance of the sources of 
 temptation (2 Tim. ii. 22 ; 1 Cor. vi. 18). There 
 must be instant suppression of the evil on its first 
 appearance (Col. iii. 5; Rom. viii. 13). 
 
 3. Care of the Body. —The body is not our own ; 
 therefore it is to be cared for as particularly as an 
 honest man cares for the property of another. The 
 general aim must be efficiency for the divine uses of 
 the body. It is not only permissible, but our 
 bounden duty to see that this efficiency is fully 
 maintained. To neglect the body, to overwork it, 
 is sin against God, and will receive appropriate 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 75 
 
 penalty. Many good men, and more good women 
 require this warning. To most, however, it is 
 necessary to point that care of the body must be 
 kept clear of every taint of selfishness. Three as¬ 
 pects of this care may be mentioned, (a.) Dress .— 
 This is, no doubt, a woman’s question mainly. Yet 
 such a creature is known as the male dandy, surely 
 one of the most despicable specimens of our race. 
 Less offensive in some respects, but more common 
 is the sloven, who permits himself to exhibit his 
 dirtiness and untidiness before the public gaze, and 
 has even been known to take a pleasure in these 
 things as proofs of his manly independence ! Cloth¬ 
 ing unquestionably expresses character. If a man 
 be pure minded, modest, self-denying, honest, he will 
 know how to dress. With respect to women, it does 
 not become a man to speak with any high degree 
 of confidence. It may be alleged, however, without 
 risk of misunderstanding, that the temptation of 
 women is to spend too much pains upon adornments, 
 and the following suggestions from the present 
 point of view may perhaps be offered. First .— 
 Dress well. A woman glorifies God by doing all in 
 her power to be beautiful. It is part of her function 
 in the world. Beauty has moral power. That she 
 should be careful in such things is right and fitting. 
 Only be sure to make the noblest types your model. 
 The sense of the beautiful needs training. Second .— 
 Be true to nature. Where fashion travesties nature, 
 be brave to break away. Fashion will soon follow. 
 In the name of truth and honesty, as well as for the 
 sake of health and comeliness, abjure all abomina¬ 
 tions of paint, powder, dyes, and all the devices by 
 
76 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 which the weak and vain strive to make themselves 
 other than God intended them to be, and so earn 
 His judgment, and the contempt of the very men 
 for whom such women do these things. Third .— 
 Observe a due proportion between expense of dress 
 and the claims of higher concerns. To dress at the 
 expense of health, denying the body its proper 
 nourishment in order to cover it with foolish orna¬ 
 ment, is a crime which brings its own penalty. To 
 spend freely on dress, and give grudgingly to the 
 cause of Christ, is a mean and hateful sin. There 
 can be no question that women, even in the middle 
 rank, are now carrying upon their bodies in the shape 
 of needless adornment, the cost of urgently needed 
 developments of Christian work both at home and 
 abroad. In a word, the philosophy of dress for 
 women is summed up in such passages as i Tim. ii. 
 9, io ; i Peter iii. 3, 4. The key to dressing well is 
 living well, thinking continually of things that are 
 lovely. 
 
 (< 5 .) Health .—It is obvious that we ought to 
 maintain our bodies in health. We cannot do 
 any kind of work well, if our bodies are not in 
 good order. Above all, in ill-health we are liable 
 to certain forms of temptation, eg, irritability, evil 
 temper, and alcoholic excess. Ill-health may be 
 sent us by permission of God in the process of His 
 discipline. But for us to injure our health by neglect, 
 or carelessness, or trespass of plain laws of nature, 
 is sin, and leads to sin. This duty may, of course, 
 be perverted into sheer self-indulgence. For a man 
 to withdraw from active work, and spend his life in 
 looking after his health, will need some very strong 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 77 
 
 justification in the special circumstances of the case. 
 The temptation to weak valetudinarianism must be 
 resisted to the uttermost, else the character will 
 miserably dwindle. Apart from this error, we 
 ought for the sake of the work God calls us to 
 do, to preserve by all means in our power our 
 physical efficiency. We ought to acquaint our¬ 
 selves with the laws which regulate our physical 
 well-being. Ignorance, in these days of free 
 education and cheap literature, is inexcusable 
 even in the humblest ranks. A clear under¬ 
 standing of these laws is as attainable as any 
 other part of education. The duty of acquiring 
 this kind of information, and putting it into 
 practice, is as binding as the duty of hearing 
 and obeying any other part of the will of God. 
 It is satisfactory to know that, with the develop¬ 
 ment of civilisation, marked improvement has taken 
 place on the whole, but still much requires to 
 be done. Under proper sanitary conditions the 
 death-rate in towns ought to be no more than 12 or 
 13 per 1000. But in Dublin the death-rate is, or 
 was very recently, 40, implying probably 50 or 60 
 for the poorer parts of the city. In Edinburgh, the 
 death-rate is still about 21. A great responsibility 
 rests on corporations, but men and women who are, 
 or hope soon to be, householders, have much in 
 their own hands. Especially ought fathers and 
 mothers to instruct their growing boys and girls in 
 certain facts of nature, ignorance of which may 
 work much woe, which a little timely information 
 might have averted. 
 
 (1 c .) Athletics .—In one respect, modern life is a 
 
78 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 vast advance even on comparatively recent periods. 
 The necessity of physical exercise is now well under¬ 
 stood, and means are being taken to supply it in 
 the case, not only of men, but of women. This is 
 altogether as it ought to be. At the same time it 
 is not without its dangers. What began as health¬ 
 ful sport may become an all-absorbing pursuit, and 
 instead of being a useful means towards an end, 
 may become an end in itself, and absorb to itself 
 energies of body and soul, which ought to be given 
 to higher things. Take the following hints :— First. 
 —If the particular sport in question unfit for work 
 or worship, it ought to be restrained, or even 
 abandoned. Football is a noble game. But if 
 the Saturday be so spent on it that body and 
 soul are unfit for the exercise of worship on 
 Sunday, perhaps even for routine of work on 
 Monday, football has become a snare, and it 
 behoves a young man, who does not regard him¬ 
 self as a mere animal, to keep it within bounds, 
 or even give it up for some less absorbing form 
 of recreation. Second .—If the special form of re¬ 
 creation lead to dissipation, it must be avoided. 
 Young men are the custodians of our national 
 sports. Let them see to it that they be so con¬ 
 ducted that a man may join in them without fear 
 of contamination, and get the physical good of 
 them without losing the purity of his Christian 
 character. And if things have come to such a 
 pass that gambling and drinking are inextricably 
 associated with them, it is high time for Christian 
 young men to deny themselves the pleasure of them. 
 The experience of many, who are not by any means 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 79 
 
 effeminate or stupidly old-fashioned, is that in respect 
 to some games, this time has even now come. It 
 is to be hoped this is exceptional. But let all 
 such enjoyments be resigned rather than have 
 any young man lose the integrity of his Christian 
 character. 
 
 Third .—The expenses connected with athletics 
 must be carefully regulated, and a proper propor¬ 
 tion observed between such expenses and the 
 claims of higher causes. It is to be feared that 
 multitudes of young men have bicycles, who own 
 scarcely a book of standard literature, and con¬ 
 tribute nothing to any philanthropic or religious 
 purpose. Contrary to Scripture, they “take 
 pleasure in the legs of a man,” and, apparently, 
 in no other part of him ! A darker side to this 
 question is the undoubted fact that the expensive¬ 
 ness of many amusements leads many foolish lads 
 into debt and dishonesty, with much consequent 
 shame and moral disaster. In all questions of 
 detail with respect to recreation, the scriptures 
 afford no help in the way of legislation. But 
 they present to us a type of character which, if 
 we become assimilated to it, will guide us to a 
 practical solution. Let a young man set his 
 heart on reaching “unto a perfect man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,” 
 Ephes. iv. 13, and he will not be satisfied with 
 any one-sided and distorted growth, but will learn 
 both how to cultivate his body, and at the same 
 time to bring it into subjection, as an element 
 and instrument in the completeness of Christian 
 character. 
 
8o 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 B. THE MIND. —Without venturing into the fas¬ 
 cinating region of animal psychology, or questioning 
 the well-authenticated facts of animal intelligence 
 adduced by so conscientious a writer as the late Pro¬ 
 fessor Romanes, it may be confidently asserted that 
 man is more than a mere animal. He is endowed 
 with “a reasonable soul.” There is a mental as 
 well as a physical aspect of his constitution. It is a 
 strange and ominous circumstance that multitudes 
 of young men emerge from our Board Schools with¬ 
 out apparently having realised this fact. It is not 
 merely that they have no interest in religion, which 
 is deplorable certainly, but they have no interest in 
 any intellectual concerns. Their whole energy, after 
 their daily tasks are ended, is absorbed in sport. 
 Literature for them has no other representative than 
 the sporting column in the daily newspaper. Their 
 chief intellectual stimulus is the report of the last 
 football match. It would be something, and might 
 lead to more, if young men could lift themselves 
 above the plane of the material, and understand 
 that they have nobler faculties than those of the 
 body, and a higher destiny than merely physical 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Neglect of mental power may proceed from an 
 opposite point of view, viz., that man is more and 
 higher even than an intellectual being. Christians h ave 
 sometimes allowed themselves to use contemptuous 
 language respecting mental endowments and mental 
 culture, which has no warrant in Scripture. There 
 is no slur cast on mind, its improvement and its 
 achievements, from one end of the Bible to the 
 other. Its writers, not only Moses, who had the 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 81 
 
 education of a prince, but herdmen like Amos, and 
 fishermen like Peter, are men of high intellectual 
 capacity and rich mental culture. The Bible idea 
 of holiness is closely akin to that of wholeness, in¬ 
 tegrity of being, completeness of life and function. 
 To neglect any part of our constitution as men is to 
 insult Him who designed it, and desires no maimed 
 gift, but a whole burnt-offering, for His praise. In 
 pursuing this thought we note three points :— 
 i. The Duty of Mental Culture. —If it be 
 certain that the body has its place and function in 
 the growth of Christian character, it is yet more 
 evident that mind has special ethical importance; 
 and the duty of doing justice to its capacities is yet 
 more obviously binding, (a.) Consider the mind as 
 an instrument or organ of the personal life of man. 
 The body works within narrowest limits of space 
 and time. It can affect only what it can immediately 
 touch. To the mind neither space nor time present 
 any limitation. They are forms by which it con¬ 
 strues and interprets to itself the manifold fulness 
 of the universe. It inhabits space, and traverses 
 time. It can present to itself objects in remotest 
 space or most distant time, and make them part of 
 its stock. The body, narrowly limited as it is, can 
 effect but little even within these limits. Body can 
 move body; body can never touch or influence 
 mind. The unspeakable folly of those who sup¬ 
 pose that by physical force they can affect the 
 progress of mind or spirit has been evident to all 
 thoughtful persons. It is instanced by our Lord as 
 comfort to His disciples in persecution (Luke xii. 4), 
 and has been exemplified not only in the case of 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER : 
 
 martyrs of the faith, but in the case of witnesses, 
 like Galileo, to intellectual truth. Mind is the 
 mightiest influence in the world. It can bend 
 nature to its purposes, and make material things 
 bear the impress of its conceptions, and carry 
 out its designs. It sways the history of nations, 
 constrains the most turbulent fury, compels the most 
 tumultuous force to obey its purposes. In competi¬ 
 tion of man with man, victory lies with mental 
 power. The most magnificent brute must yield, in 
 the long run, to the sway of intellectual force. The 
 body is no doubt a very marvellous organ, fearfully 
 and wonderfully made, with a complexity and ad¬ 
 justment of parts which make the study of it of pro¬ 
 found and enthralling interest. When all has been 
 said, however, the mind remains yet more mar¬ 
 vellous in power, more delicate in structure, more 
 intimately connected with the personal life. With 
 a maimed body, the spiritual life remains intact. 
 Its achievements are undiminished in extent or 
 importance. Let the mind suffer injury, and the 
 man himself ceases to be an effective agent, either 
 in the lower worldly or the higher moral aspect of 
 life. If the care of the body, therefore, as organ and 
 instrument of man, be a binding duty, much more 
 does mental culture stand out as an obligation laid 
 upon us by Him who made us after so sublime a 
 pattern. 
 
 (i b .) The same conclusion forces itself upon us when 
 we consider mind in relation to character. Mental 
 and moral growth cannot be disentangled. It is 
 happily matter of common observation that growth 
 in Christian character is accompanied by heightening 
 
ITS CULTURE . 
 
 83 
 
 of mental faculty. The Bible heroes were men of 
 culture, though some of them had no conventional 
 education. Their walk with God, their sympathy 
 with spiritual conceptions and purposes, enlarged 
 their mental horizon, quickened their mental powers, 
 made them poets, prophets, historians, and enabled 
 them to write in a diction which, even as it appears 
 in translations, ranks high in literary merit. The 
 same fact appears in our own country. To this day 
 we have peasants who, in all that constitutes real 
 culture, come in no way behind the smartest pro¬ 
 duct of school or college ; and this they owe, un¬ 
 questionably, to the power of godliness, quickening 
 their whole being, in its intellectual no less than in 
 its moral aspect. It is happily within reach of 
 shepherd and crofter, miner and factory hand, to be 
 a refined and cultured gentleman. Walking with 
 God, holding fellowship in Word, Sacrament, and 
 Prayer with infinite Love, Wisdom, and Holiness, he 
 may attain a fulness of mental power which makes 
 him compeer of the highest intellectual ability. The 
 converse is also true. Mental culture is essential 
 to moral growth. Intellectual interest is neces¬ 
 sary to success, even in mechanical employment. 
 The mason, stonecutter, or engineer, increases in 
 efficiency in proportion as he exerts his intellectual 
 power upon the work before him. Much more does 
 this apply to the art of living. The ethical doctrine 
 of Socrates was condensed into the saying, “ Virtue 
 is Knowledge.” This contains an important truth. 
 To perform an action in blind obedience to law, 
 custom, or convention, is not, strictly speaking, a 
 moral act. The thing done may be formally right, 
 
84 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 but we, in doing it, have not moral character. We 
 are mere machines. Only when we see the mean¬ 
 ing of the act, relate it consciously to the principle 
 it expresses, and understand its bearing on other 
 persons, are we really moral in the doing of it. 
 Character grows as insight deepens. To be good 
 men we require to think about life. Unless we 
 cultivate mental power, we shall not think clearly. 
 Hence mental culture is directly required in aid of 
 moral growth. There is no premium put on stupidity. 
 Mental indolence is moral fault, which will involve 
 inevitable penalty. When situations of moral per¬ 
 plexity arise, trained intelligence will aid in the 
 application of moral principle ; while the man who 
 has been content to let his intellect lie dormant, and 
 live by moral rule of thumb, will flounder amid 
 doubts, and land himself in serious error. Mental 
 culture is, therefore, the duty of all who admit the 
 obligation of moral excellence. 
 
 2. Cultivation of Mental Faculties. —It is 
 a pity that the science of psychology has hitherto 
 been locked up in books written in an uncouth 
 technical terminology. If we are properly to culti¬ 
 vate mind, we need to know, in outline at any rate, 
 our mental constitution. The task of giving such 
 an outline is, of course, impossible here. It will be 
 enough to dwell on the fact that, just as we ought to 
 develope each member of the body and see that both 
 anus and lower limbs obtain a fair amount of ex¬ 
 ercise, so we ought to secure that all our mental 
 powers shall be developed together. Of course the 
 exigencies of work require us to concentrate and 
 specialise, and so to use certain of our powers in 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 85 
 
 excess of others. The botanist requires one set of 
 faculties for his special work, the mathematician 
 another for his, the commercial man for his, and so 
 on. Plainly, however, the man himself is more than 
 botanist, mathematician, or shopkeeper, and, if he is 
 to be a whole man, he cannot afford to neglect any 
 of his mental powers. A man, whose physical 
 energy ran solely to the developing of arm or leg, 
 would be a monster. So the ‘man whose mental 
 power is absorbed in recording observations, or 
 making calculations, or piling up money, is an in¬ 
 tellectual and moral monster. It behoves us to see 
 what powers we have, and to bestow careful cultiva¬ 
 tion on them all. This is true culture. It is easy 
 to make fun of culture, by looking at those in whom 
 it means no more than a way of wearing clothes or 
 using cant phrases. Properly viewed it is noble and 
 right. 
 
 By way of illustration, take three great faculties 
 of mind :— 
 
 (a.) Reason .—This is the power by which the 
 things and persons around us become intelligible to 
 us. How, we ask, is knowledge possible ? Various 
 philosophical systems rush upon us open-mouthed 
 with conflicting answers. The answer of the Bible, 
 and, let it be said, the answer of the latest and 
 noblest philosophy, is that knowledge is possible 
 because the world outside us is itself a revelation of 
 reason or spirit, with which our reason or spiritual 
 being is in essence one. The work of reason, there¬ 
 fore, is to discover the reason there is in things, and 
 so to trace in the mass of things presented to our 
 observation, order, harmony, and completeness. 
 
86 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 This is the task of reason as such, and of every 
 reasonable being. No doubt the task requires 
 special sciences and special men ; but it is none the 
 less the task of all endowed with reason. Men of 
 science are simply our ministers in this very 
 thing. To neglect this task is unworthy of 
 our constitution as men. The attainment of truth 
 is a divine obligation, even when the connection 
 between the fact and our individual interest is not 
 obvious at present. Facts held to be remote 
 and useless, have been found to have intimate con¬ 
 nection with our welfare, and have been employed 
 in applied science. The strict correlation of truth 
 and wellbeing may never be fully discovered ; but 
 the duty of seeking truth is printed deep in our 
 mental constitution. The cultivation of reason is, 
 therefore, a plain duty, binding not only on the 
 leisured classes, but on the man of humblest and 
 most laborious employment. To neglect its cultiva¬ 
 tion is sin. Much more is it sin to pervert its use, 
 and employ it, not to lay bare to our reverent gaze 
 the traces of the working of the divine mind, but to 
 support some prejudice, to prove some opinion, to 
 advance some system of our own. The culture of 
 reason is, therefore, in itself and for its own sake, 
 right and dutiful. It has its reward, however, in 
 moral excellence. It is true, of course, that exercise 
 of reason is accompanied by moral danger, and may 
 give rise to pride, obstinacy, and dogmatism. It is 
 certain, however, that these intellectual vices are 
 notes of the misuse of reason. Reason cannot be 
 truly exercised in pursuit of truth without increasing 
 at the same time the virtues of sincerity, impartiality, 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 87 
 
 candour, patience, humility, and reverence. Holi¬ 
 ness and wisdom are combined in God, and are 
 meant to be combined in the ideal of Christian 
 character. 
 
 (bi) Imagination .—The facts, in which order and 
 harmony lie, as it were, hid, do not always or often 
 occur in exactly the combination required to give at 
 once the idea of the whole of which they are part. 
 The man of Science has to bring his facts from many 
 different quarters, and out of them construct his 
 idea. In this work, imagination plays a great part. 
 It is the power of seeing, or foreseeing, the com¬ 
 pleted whole in the fragments presented to the eye. 
 Imagination is not solely or properly employed in 
 fiction ; its real function is to enable us to see facts 
 in their completeness, and as such it is largely em¬ 
 ployed in science and history. Its use in moral life 
 is great and important. Its function is to see and 
 to envisage things that are great and good, so that 
 they shall not merely be painfully pieced together 
 by slow process of reason, but shall be flashed upon 
 the inner eye in their glorious fulness. In this 
 operation there are very serious risks, calling for 
 great care in the exercise of this faculty. Barely as 
 a faculty, it will embody in mental pictures evil as 
 well as good ; and evil, thus embodied, has most 
 disastrous effects on moral soundness. Imagina¬ 
 tion uncontrolled may become polluted, may taint or 
 defile character at its birth, may strengthen lust, 
 may seduce or hurry into sin and vice. It may 
 lodge in the mind that which no effort can obliterate, 
 pictures which refuse to vanish, and which gleam 
 out on the ashamed and humiliated soul, long after 
 
88 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 conscience has condemned them, the will for¬ 
 saken them, and even the desire ceased to yearn 
 for them. The control and education of the imagin¬ 
 ation is, therefore, urgently demanded. Exercise 
 the imagination upon all that is fairest in nature, 
 art, literature. Even dwellers in smoky towns are 
 not excluded from means of cultivating the imagin¬ 
 ation. The narrowest lane is, like Kant’s garden 
 space, unendlich hoch. Let the mind be a gallery 
 of noble pictures, and the soul will rise by their 
 contemplation ; Phil. iv. 8. 
 
 ( c .) Memory .—This is the power by which things 
 past are kept in perpetual presence before the mind, 
 and thus, distant though they may be, in point of 
 time, are made an element and influence in the life 
 and action of the present. It is plain that all growth 
 in knowledge and in character depends on this great 
 power, which, as men, we possess, of causing the 
 swiftly fleeting years to abide with us, and become 
 formative influences in the living present, and 
 useful guides for days to come, so that the sun 
 stands still on Gibeon and the moon in the valley of 
 Ajalon, and we live in the light of the never absent 
 past. The culture of memory, therefore, is essential 
 to attainment of moral excellence. Live carefully. 
 Pay rational heed to the events, even comparative 
 trifles, which make up the discipline of daily life. 
 So shall these things stand in memory and be the 
 teachers of the soul in occasions of emergency and 
 perplexity. “The ear that heareth the reproof of 
 life abideth among the wise.” To let any day pass 
 into the limbo of an unheeded and unencumbered 
 past is folly, a deliberate abandonment of our stand- 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 89 
 
 ing as men and reversion to the type of animal life, 
 which we may picture to ourselves as a series of 
 impressions, unrelated to a permanent and develop¬ 
 ing ethical Self. Strictly speaking, the past cannot 
 be forgotten. Here memory stands unique among 
 the powers of mind. Neglect it as we may, it does 
 not become extinct as a faculty. Man cannot forget. 
 Only God can forget. Memory registers deterioration 
 as well as growth. To remember, never to be able to 
 forget the deeds which have manifested the down¬ 
 ward trend of character, the loss of our spiritual 
 heritage, would be a doom to whose horror we 
 need not add the physical imagery of worm and 
 flame. Hold this as a deterrent before you, when 
 evil tempts you. From this flee to One, who alone 
 can both forgive and forget, “for,” He says, “ I will 
 forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin 
 no more” ; Jer. xxxi. 34. 
 
 3. The Use of Books. —Mental culture of high 
 and beautiful kind may be possessed by those who 
 have but little access to books ; and those who 
 have read many books may remain, in fact, uncul¬ 
 tivated. At the same time, books have an influence 
 in men cal culture and moral growth which cannot 
 be exaggerated. Books preserve for us the inherit¬ 
 ance of the past. Stored in books are the great 
 thoughts by which the ages have summed up the 
 experience of life ; the great lives which have 
 moulded history, and formed the guide and inspira¬ 
 tion of successive generations. These are our 
 spiritual heritage. We are meant to enter upon it, 
 and by it grow wiser, stronger, nobler. This we 
 can only do by reading. To neglect the use of 
 
90 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 books is to cut ourselves off from our rightful 
 inheritance, to make ourselves wilfully poor. Books 
 open out to us an immense field of mental exercise, 
 of purest pleasure, and lead us into the most 
 ennobling companionship. By a little self-denial 
 even the humblest wage-earner can endow himself 
 with all the world’s best riches. Sitting in his 
 humble chamber, when the day’s work is done, 
 he may pass to the most distant reaches of the 
 universe, and traverse at will the pathway of the 
 stars. Living hard and frugally he may enjoy, 
 when his poor meal is ended, pleasures rarer and 
 higher than the voluptuary can ever know, and may 
 feast his soul on truth, beauty, and goodness. Soli¬ 
 tary in his lodgings, he may become the companion 
 of Homer and Dante, of Shakespeare and Milton, 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning. To him 
 they will unveil their secrets, pour out their wealth 
 of mind, and sing their gladdest, their most pathetic, 
 their most solemn lays. 
 
 That a young man, with mental power and 
 adequate education, should deliberately prefer the 
 obscenities of the street, the degradations of the 
 public house, the frivolities of the ball-room, is one 
 of the mysteries of human deterioration. Books 
 strengthen our jaded faculties, and enable us to do 
 more efficiently the work of life. If any trade so 
 works its operatives that fatigue of body entirely 
 destroys mental power, and deprives those who 
 would read and improve their minds of the capacity 
 and opportunity for so doing, there is a distinct call 
 for change in the conditions of the occupation. The 
 plea that more time would simply mean more oppor- 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 9i 
 
 tunity for dissipation is a mere excuse of selfishness 
 on the part of those who chiefly profit by the long 
 hours of labour. Where the time is afforded, how¬ 
 ever, the weight of responsibility rests on the in¬ 
 dividual workman. If he then abuse the period of 
 rest, and, by his method of spending it, wastes 
 rather than recuperates his powers, he ought to 
 understand he is doing grievous wrong, first, to 
 himself, then, to his employer, above all, to his 
 fellow-workmen, upon whom he brings the burden 
 of an evil reputation, and possibly the forfeiture of 
 the liberty he was unworthy to enjoy. “A man,” 
 no doubt, is “ a man for a’ that,” and we may freely 
 discount such mere externalities as rank and wealth. 
 But the man who deliberately allows the noblest 
 part of him to lie waste, and spends in idleness and 
 folly hours in which he might be growing more 
 widely informed, more richly cultivated, is less than 
 a man, and tends ever to sink downward in the 
 scale of moral being. 
 
 We ought, therefore, as part of the culture, not 
 only of mind, but of character, to make wise use of 
 books. Take these brief hints. Read with a pur¬ 
 pose. There are many who read with no higher 
 aim than that they have in view in smoking, to in¬ 
 duce a pleasant sensation, and fill their vacant mind 
 with the semblance of occupation. No doubt it is 
 permissible to read as a means of pleasure, and 
 fiction has its place. Even so, however, the domi¬ 
 nant purpose of reading must be mental culture. 
 Any work of fiction, which makes the mind in¬ 
 capable of steady effort and lofty thought, stands 
 thereby condemned. A vast proportion o the 
 
92 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 fiction which pours weekly from the press is of this 
 ignoble order. Read systematically. Choose some 
 definite line of study. The interest of your trade, 
 the annals of your town, the history of your country, 
 open out into fruitful fields of study. The domain 
 of the special sciences awaits you. Biography pre¬ 
 sents opportunity of noblest exercise. It will go 
 hard with you if you cannot, even in a remote 
 hamlet, find some library, public or private, where 
 your difficulty will be not the scantiness but the 
 wealth of the material provided. Take your line 
 and keep to it, and be not led astray into mere 
 desultory browsing. “ Reading, in the case of mere 
 miscellaneous readers, is like the racing of some 
 little dog about the moor, snuffing everything, and 
 catching nothing ; but a reader of the right sort 
 finds his prototype in Jacob, who wrestled with an 
 angel all night, and counted himself the better for 
 the bout, though the sinew of his thigh shrank in 
 consequence” (Blackie, “ Self-Culture,” p. 29). 
 
 Read great books. Hear the genial Professor, 
 whose wise and witty counsel has been so welcome : 
 “ Stick to the great books, the original books, the 
 fountain-heads of great ideas and noble passions, 
 and you will learn joyfully to dispense with the 
 volumes of accessory talk, by which their virtue 
 has been as frequently obscured as illuminated.” 
 Possess yourself of the great book on your subject, 
 and this will act as your guide through its general 
 literature, and will enable you to estimate and use 
 it aright. Above all, read the Bible, which stands 
 facile princeps amid the universal literature of the 
 race. By your estimate of this, your mental grasp 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 and your moral character can be most certainly 
 gauged. In all your study, its steady light will 
 illumine your path. It will absorb into itself, and 
 restate in the light of its own principles, all truth ; 
 and will make its earnest, humble student, as fear¬ 
 less, frank, and broad as itself, while bending him 
 in reverence to Him who in the supreme sense is its 
 Author. Read no bad book. It may be that some 
 persons have to read bad books, as pathologists 
 have to study the most loathsome diseases. It is 
 scarcely probable that God calls you to be a moral 
 pathologist. If He ever does, He will let you know 
 by some sure sign. Meantime, avoid such books. 
 They are a moral plague. You don’t need to read 
 them to find out what they are. By chance you 
 may begin without knowing what one of them is ; 
 as you might find yourself in evil company without 
 intending it. Then there is one thing to do—act 
 at once, quit the book. Next to bad company, 
 bad books have wrought more moral evil than any 
 other form of wickedness, leaving indelible stains 
 on the imagination, weakening the conscience, 
 distorting the will. There are authors for whom, 
 and for their readers, it had been better, if the first 
 edition of their works had been tied about their 
 necks, and they had been cast into the depths of 
 the sea. 
 
 C. CONSCIENCE.—We have thus taken a brief 
 view of man’s physical and mental constitution, in 
 relation to the development of Christian character. 
 We now come to study in the same connection his 
 distinctively moral nature. We shall do so under 
 the two heads of conscience and will. Conscience 
 
94 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHAR A CTER: 
 
 and will are improperly described as powers pos¬ 
 sessed by the man, as though he were separable 
 from them. They are, properly speaking, the man 
 himself viewed in his relation to the good and right, 
 as knowing it and doing it. If we speak of them as 
 faculties, we must disengage this phraseology from 
 all mechanical or physical metaphors. Conscience 
 is the man, knowing. Will is the man, doing. 
 
 i. The Nature of Conscience. —This subject 
 has been keenly discussed in modern philosophy, 
 since the time of Hobbes (1588-1679). The writer, 
 who has been most distinguished for his vindication 
 of the supremacy of conscience, as well as for the 
 loftiness of his whole moral teaching, is the famous 
 Bishop Butler (1692-1752). 
 
 We are not concerned here with such discussions. 
 It is interesting to note, however, that the general 
 ethical teaching of the idealist philosophy, repre¬ 
 sented by such a man as T. H. Green of Oxford, is 
 in large agreement with the Biblical doctrine of 
 man’s moral nature. The leading passage in Scrip¬ 
 ture dealing with conscience is Rom. ii. 14, 15, the 
 text, it will be remembered, of Butler’s Three Ser¬ 
 mons on Human Nature. That passage teaches us : 
 First, that man has received a revelation of good, 
 sufficient at all stages of his history to make him 
 morally responsible. This revelation has come in 
 different forms to men in different circumstances. 
 To Gentiles, it appears as Nature, “the work of the 
 law,” i.e., a course of conduct in conformity with 
 the divine will, being written in their hearts, as the 
 Law of the Ten Words was on the tables of Stone. 
 To the Tews, it appears in distinct articulate form 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 95 
 
 as the Law, the will of God, directly and explicitly 
 communicated in the Ten Words, and the moral 
 code founded thereon. Now, to all men, it has 
 appeared in Christ, in whom Nature and Law are 
 alike fulfilled, and the highest moral good absolutely 
 realized. 
 
 Second ,, that man is capable of seeing the good 
 thus presented to him, and does, by his inmost 
 nature, approve of it, and bind it upon himself 
 as the highest law of his being. The conscience 
 of man, z.e., the man himself, bears witness along 
 with Nature, Law, and Christ, i.e., along with the 
 voice of God, acknowledges its authority, and claims 
 the surrender of the whole man to it. This is the 
 special application in ethics of the general Biblical 
 doctrine of the constitution of human nature as 
 made in the image of God. Man is in spiritual 
 affinity with God, is meant for God, has that in him 
 which recognises and ratifies the Word of God, and 
 makes him unsatisfied till this word be accepted 
 and done. Conscience is thus not an inde¬ 
 pendent authority, as though it could, apart from 
 God, proclaim what is right, and legislate for man. 
 Conscience summons man to listen to the voice of 
 God speaking in the revelation of His will. Our 
 obligation to do right is not to conscience, but to 
 that God, to whose voice conscience calls us to give 
 heed. Hence “to him that knoweth to do good, 
 and doeth it not, to him it is sin ” (James iv. 17), 
 not merely moral fault, or crime against conscience, 
 but sin, offence against God to whom conscience is 
 the witness in the heart of man. In the writings of 
 some moralists, conscience seems almost to take the 
 
96 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 place of God. The Scriptures countenance no such 
 exaggerated view of conscience. In them, con¬ 
 science is, like faith, nothing in itself save the 
 apprehension of God. This, however, if it deprives 
 conscience of a fictitious, and indeed, impotent 
 authority, bestows upon it another more real and 
 mighty. Conscience is now to be looked upon as 
 bringing man into spiritual contact with God. It is 
 the organ or faculty by which he becomes aware of 
 the divine will for him, which is at the same time the 
 law of his own highest well-being. Conscience, 
 therefore, is supreme in man’s moral nature. It 
 claims obedience, not to itself, but to the absolute 
 will, to which it is the testimony in man’s conscious¬ 
 ness. 
 
 No doubt, there are difficulties in defending the 
 supremacy of conscience. Their gravity, however, 
 is chiefly due to the acceptance of the intuitionist 
 theory of conscience, as though this were the 
 Biblical teaching. If conscience were in man an 
 independent source of infallible moral judgments, 
 the difficulties presented by the fact that the de¬ 
 liverances of conscience have varied from age to 
 age and race to race, would be insuperable. If, 
 however, we see in conscience simply man himself 
 listening to the voice of God, we can understand at 
 once how his power of hearing correctly may have 
 varied in the process of his growth, and how, above 
 all, if we hold the Christian doctrine of sin, the 
 hearing organ itself may have become deteriorated 
 and uncertain. Conscience, we repeat, is not the 
 revelation of right. It is in man the organ of that 
 revelation. Its supremacy is due to this its func- 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 97 
 
 tion, and is vindicated according as it discharges 
 its function clearly and fully. 
 
 2. Our Duty Toward Conscience. —Possessed 
 of, or possessed by, a faculty so great in function 
 and influence, we are bound to see that it obtains 
 full scope for its exercise in the making of character 
 and in the work of life. This will include three 
 aspects of duty. ( a .) To tram it .—Conscience has 
 been involved in man’s moral history. It has suf¬ 
 fered through his sin. It shares in his restoration. 
 Man redeemed, having the spring of new life in him, 
 has as the goal of moral development conscience act¬ 
 ing freely, swiftly, catching every whisper of the divine 
 will, and instantly calling man to obedience. The 
 aim of training, therefore, must be to heighten the 
 faculty of conscience, making it more delicate in its 
 susceptibility, more intent in its relation to God, 
 more imperative in its relation to man. 
 
 The means at our disposal may be classified thus. 
 First, the elementary conditions of moral life amid 
 which man is born, which are gathered into the 
 second table of the decalogue. Only as we observe 
 these obvious rights of life, honour, property, re¬ 
 putation, with all the detailed obligations involved 
 in them, can our conscience be clear, sound, and 
 trustworthy. Any trifling with them, even in name 
 of some lofty spirituality of life or teaching, produces 
 disastrous results to the individual or community 
 which tolerates such conduct. In the home, the 
 school, the market, conscience gains the exercise 
 which is to make it at once strong and delicate, 
 sure in its discrimination, solemn and resolute in its 
 proclamations. Second, the literary expressions of 
 
 G 
 
98 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 the moral experience of men. History and bio¬ 
 graphy, which tell of the growth, the triumph, the 
 doom of nations, and unfold the drama of the human 
 soul in struggle, attainment, or defeat, are magnifi¬ 
 cent instructors and trainers of conscience ; and as 
 such ought to be carefully used by all who seek 
 moral strength. Fiction of the noblest kind has 
 here a great field. The masters of this art have 
 presented us with studies of virtues and vices, and 
 of men in various circumstances of temptation, 
 which are invaluable as exercises by which con¬ 
 science may be trained in grasp of moral fact, 
 fineness of discernment, and urgency of appeal. 
 The tragedies of Shakespeare are the world’s 
 manual of ethics, illustrated with examples drawn 
 by a master’s hand, enforced by pity and terror, 
 evoked by a master’s touch. Scott, Thackeray, 
 Dickens, George Eliot, with many of lesser name, 
 have done work which, viewed as a training for con¬ 
 science, ought to receive our careful study. Above 
 all, the Bible, apart from any higher aspect, without 
 raising any disputed point, is unquestionably the 
 great moral educator of the race. “ By the study 
 of what other book,” asks Huxley, who himself did 
 not accept its highest teaching, “ could children be 
 so humanised ? ” The Bible is the touchstone of 
 conscience. Conscience can only be maintained in 
 truth and vigour according as it is continually re¬ 
 freshed by earnest study of the ideal of manhood 
 presented in Scripture, and principally in the char¬ 
 acter of Jesus Christ. Third, communion with God. 
 Here we are passing from morality into religion. 
 In fellowship with God our whole nature is raised to 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 99 
 
 its highest power, and conscience shares in the illu¬ 
 mination and transfiguration. In that direct spiritual 
 intercommunication which exists between man and 
 God through Jesus Christ, conscience is flooded 
 with light. Man sees with growing clearness what 
 the will of God for him is, and is strengthened to do 
 it. It is not God’s way with man to provide him 
 with formulas of conduct to suit every occasion. He 
 desires a higher thing for man, viz., that, taught of 
 God, he may see in any given situation the purpose 
 of God which requires therein to be fulfilled. This 
 result is not easily or speedily reached. There will 
 be times of weakness, morbid tenderness and scrupu¬ 
 losity, harshness and narrowness. At such times 
 we need to be patient with ourselves ; and if we 
 have reached a higher stage, to be most charitable 
 towards those whose conscience is thus immature 
 (i Cor. viii. 7-13, x. 23-33 ; Rom. xv. 1, 2), till at 
 last we and they reach a full age, and have our 
 senses exercised to discern both good and evil 
 (Heb. v. 14). Thus shall the testimony of con¬ 
 science become an element in our assurance toward 
 God (2 Cor. i. 12 ; 1 Peter iii. 21). 
 
 (1 b .) To obey it .—Conscience thus informed and 
 educated by the revealed will of God is the supreme 
 authority in the realm of human life and action. 
 It is a deliberate abandonment of the position to 
 which God designed us to place our conscience in 
 the hands of some “ spiritual director/' and take his 
 utterances for the very voice of God. No doubt it 
 is much easier thus to hand over the responsibility 
 of our moral guidance to some infallible authority 
 outside of ourselves. But we cannot do so without 
 
IOO 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 at the same time enfeebling our moral powers and 
 lowering our moral tone. God meant us to bear 
 responsibility. We cannot shirk it without becom¬ 
 ing morally worse. Our duty is to train our con¬ 
 science by the means open to us, so that it shall be 
 a true and faithful witness to the will of God, and 
 then to adhere unflinchingly to its declarations. 
 The whole domain of life is to be brought under 
 the sway of conscience. Actions prescribed by ex¬ 
 ternal authorities, e.g., the law of the land, are to be 
 performed, not merely under constraint of common 
 custom, but “for conscience sake” (Rom. xiii. 5). 
 Actions for which there is no outward rule are to be 
 brought under the scrutiny of conscience, and so 
 performed “for conscience sake” (1 Cor. x. 25-29). 
 Thus every deed should be penetrated by the con¬ 
 viction of conscience, and submitted to its arbitra¬ 
 ment. No doubt a large part of life in Christianised 
 society is regulated by common agreement, so that 
 on the surface there will not be much difference 
 between the man of merely conventional morality 
 and the man who makes a conscience of all he does. 
 At the same time there will be great and important 
 differences lying deeper. The man who obeys con¬ 
 science will do the same habitual actions as others ; 
 but he will do them better, for he perceives the 
 moral issues that belong to them. He will do things 
 right and good which others would not think of, for 
 he keeps his “soul’s large window” cleansed from 
 the dimness of selfish desire, and is ever ready to 
 discern and follow the indications of God’s will. 
 The morality of mere conventional observances is 
 self-satisfied, proud, and meagre. The morality of 
 
ITS CULTURE . 
 
 IOI 
 
 conscience is self-dissatisfied, humble, ever aspiring, 
 ceaseless in its efforts after higher excellence. Con¬ 
 science thus obeyed is “good” (Acts xxiii. i; i Tim. 
 i. 5, 19; Heb. xiii. 18; 1 Peter iii. 16, 21); not as 
 though the man who thus obeys never does wrong, 
 but because he, the man, the true self, seeks 
 God’s glory, will not rest in any attainment short of 
 this, and will not lie still under the weight of un¬ 
 forgiven sin. It is “ void of offence toward God and 
 toward man” (Acts xxiv. 16); not because the man 
 never grieves either God or man, but because the 
 glory of God and the good of man constitute the 
 aim of his life ; and “pure” (1 Tim. iii. 9 ; 2 Tim. 
 i. 3), not because the man is sinless, but because he 
 has no doubleness of mind, and heartily seeks to 
 order his life according to the will of God. 
 
 Disobedience to conscience is fraught with con¬ 
 sequences disastrous to conscience itself. It may 
 be difficult to destroy conscience, but it can be done. 
 Conscience is part of our human nature, and in the 
 vast injury done to human nature through sin, con¬ 
 science suffers. In this process of injury we observe 
 three steps. Defilement. 1 Cor. viii. 7 ; Titus i. 
 15. A man disregards the testimony of conscience, 
 and straightway his whole moral nature suffers from 
 the taint of sin. His conscience does not escape. 
 Its perception of moral distinctions has become 
 obscured, it speaks weakly and uncertainly, and even 
 commits grievous errors. His mind and conscience, 
 if he persevere, will become defiled. Searing. [ 
 Tim. iv. 2. Asa nerve may be deadened by burn¬ 
 ing, so conscience, by persistence in known evil, 
 may become reduced to dumbness and impotency. 
 
102 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 A man may sin till he has an evil liberty in sinning. 
 It is said of him “he has no conscience.” It is pro¬ 
 foundly true. Eyes has he, but he sees not, and 
 none of the awful beauty of goodness is perceptible 
 by him. Ears has he, but he hears not, and no 
 voice from the eternal region of right ever reaches 
 him. Perversion. Matt. vi. 23. A man may so per¬ 
 sistently substitute his own will for God’s will, that 
 at length he comes to regard his own will as God’s 
 will. His whole nature is thus perverted, turned 
 toward self in the belief and conviction that this is 
 God. In this wheeling of the soul away from the 
 light conscience takes part. It speaks, but its judg¬ 
 ments are absolute perversions of truth. The light 
 that is in him is darkness, and how great is that 
 darkness ! The annals of the Papacy present in¬ 
 stances of this on a grand scale. The records of 
 individual lives, as they are read by the eye of God, 
 present, it cannot be doubted, many such cases, in 
 which sin has procured this awful penalty. Let 
 such a fate serve as warning, and send us back, with 
 the awe of God upon our souls, to the path of con¬ 
 stant obedience. 
 
 ( c .) To vindicate it. — Hitherto we have looked at 
 conscience as it appears in the individual man, but 
 man himself cannot properly be considered merely 
 as an individual. He must be considered in his 
 relation to his fellows, living among them, modified 
 and influenced by them, finding his own highest 
 welfare in ends which include their welfare also. 
 The community in which he lives, therefore, may 
 be regarded as a spiritual unity, almost as a per¬ 
 sonality. It has a moral goal, a moral history, 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 103 
 
 and a moral faculty. There is such a thing as 
 “ the public conscience,” the conscience not merely 
 of this man or that, but of the body of men living 
 together as a moral organism. The public con¬ 
 science, like that of the individual, witnesses on be¬ 
 half of the right and good. It furnishes the spring 
 and motive in obedience to the Law of the State, as 
 an expression of the mind of God. Its main opera¬ 
 tion, however, lies in the region of conduct beyond 
 the reach of legal enactment and penalty. There 
 are great moral evils which lie in large measure 
 beyond the scope of law. Their suppression 
 or control must lie in the last resort with 
 the conscience of the community. No Act of 
 Parliament can make the country sober ; but 
 the conscience of the community, awake, en¬ 
 lightened, active, in all ranks and classes could do it. 
 No legislation can cleanse Scotland of the taint of 
 impurity, which makes our domestic life so dismal, 
 and often so tragic ; but the public conscience, 
 operative in every social circle, and in every home, 
 could do it. 
 
 Here, therefore, lies the duty of every Christian 
 man, woman, and child, having informed the in¬ 
 dividual conscience by the revealed will of God, to 
 make known its testimony in the community, and so 
 to educate, enlighten, and quicken the conscience 
 of the community, elevating its standard, and secur¬ 
 ing the certainty and soundness of its judgments. 
 Let every member of the community make up his 
 mind upon such moral questions as those mentioned 
 above, and bring his mind to bear on alt within his 
 reach, and upon the community at large, and so 
 
104 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 add the weight of his character and influence to the 
 existing sum of moral sentiment and judgment. 
 As long as alcoholic excess is regarded as indiffer¬ 
 ent, almost creditable, so long drunkenness will be 
 our national vice. As long as impurity is con¬ 
 doned, excused, or passed over lightly as a “ mis¬ 
 take,” so long will the blot of prevailing illegitimacy 
 stain our statistics, and the foul stream of unclean¬ 
 ness roll on through crowded slum and sequestered 
 country hamlet. As long, too, as those who do 
 regard drunkenness and impurity as sinful, refrain 
 from uttering their voice regarding these evils, and 
 fail to stimulate public feeling with respect to them, 
 and neglect necessary counsel and warning to their 
 children and others under their influence, so long 
 will these evils prevail among us, and those who 
 thus neglect their duty as Christians incur personal 
 responsibility for them. The reward of such testi¬ 
 mony against moral evil has sometimes been death. 
 A classic instance is that of the hermit Telemachus 
 who died in the arena of the Colisaeum, and by his 
 death stopped for ever the cruelty of the gladiatorial 
 games. “ One habitual crime at least was wiped 
 from the earth by the self-devotion of one humble, 
 obscure, almost nameless man.'’ a Often the reward 
 has been misunderstanding, disappointment, and 
 shame ; but whatever it be, the path of duty is 
 plain, and must be trodden by all who will be true 
 to God and His light. Failure in fidelity injures 
 the cause of righteousness. It also injures our own 
 souls. We cannot be silent in presence of moral 
 
 a Story exquisitely told in Miss Younge’s “ Book of Golden 
 Deeds.” 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 105 
 
 wrong, without having our moral judgment weakened, 
 our standard lowered, our susceptibilities blunted. 
 Fidelity is itself noblest service to God and man, 
 even though our witness-bearing should not end, in 
 our lifetime at least, in suppression of the wrong 
 against which we testify. Here we touch on mys¬ 
 teries. Like Christ and in fellowship with Him, His 
 faithful people “bear the sin of many, and make 
 intercession for the transgressors.” The sins of the 
 nation press upon their spirits. They bear the 
 burden to God in agony of supplication. Such 
 sufferers, disappointed, beaten, crucified, are, in a 
 profounder sense than that in which the phrase is 
 applied to political leaders, “the saviours of their 
 country.” God hears them, and for their sakes 
 even Sodom will have its day of grace lengthened 
 out. 
 
 D. WILL. —If, in speaking of Conscience, we 
 were afraid to use the term “ faculty,” lest it should 
 be supposed that it was in any sense separable from 
 the man himself, we may well be much more re¬ 
 luctant to apply it to Will. Here we are not dealing 
 with anything that belongs to man, in the sense in 
 which arms and legs, or even memory and imagina¬ 
 tion, belong to him. In studying the will we are 
 studying the man. The will is the man. From the 
 first page in which we began this review of human 
 nature in relation to the culture of character, we 
 have been moving from the circumference to the 
 centre. Now we have reached it, and are to con¬ 
 sider how the will of man operates in the cultivation 
 of Christian character. 
 
 1. The Freedom of the Will.—T his subject 
 
io6 
 
 CHRIST/AN CHARACTER: 
 
 is one of the most difficult in the whole round of 
 philosophy or theology, and it has been made the 
 battle ground of many controversies. Its difficulties 
 have been increased, however, by the one-sided 
 views of freedom which conflicting theories have 
 adopted. The commonest view of freedom to be 
 found, both in theory and practice, is that which is 
 technically called “liberty of indifference,” and is 
 practically known as liberty to “ do as you please.” 
 In this form it becomes an object of ambition to 
 many young men and women, whose moral educa¬ 
 tion, however, has scarcely begun till they learn 
 that true freedom is not this, but something quite 
 other. 
 
 Three elements may be distinguished in the full 
 conception of freedom :— 
 
 (a.) Self-determination .—In any action there are 
 certain motives, or objects prompting to the per¬ 
 formance of the action. One theory maintains that 
 we are always and necessarily determined in action 
 by the motives that are presented to us. Another 
 theory claims that we are free to reject even the 
 strongest motives, and to act without the solicitation 
 of any motive whatever. In point of fact, however, 
 no outward object can move us, till it is taken with¬ 
 in the sphere of our conscious life, and is discerned 
 as a means of attaining some end which we con¬ 
 sider as good, and ministering to what we conceive 
 as our welfare. The animal is presumably moved, 
 for instance, to eat by presentation of some object 
 fitted to satisfy hunger, without any reference to a 
 Self. Man, however, is moved by the ideal of self- 
 satisfaction obtainable through eating. Eating is, 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 107 
 
 in him, not mere instinctive movement; it is the 
 action of a Self, aiming at self-realisation. He is, 
 therefore, not determined by objects outside of him¬ 
 self. Neither is he indetermined, his will moving, 
 as it were, in vacuo . He is Self-determined. The 
 action originates in and is due to the activity of a 
 Self, or Personality. All action, therefore, which a 
 self-conscious being performs, is his action It is 
 his offspring, a portion of his moral being. We act, 
 and the resultant action is ours. We cannot rid 
 ourselves of responsibility for it. Very often we 
 would willingly do so, and relieve ourselves of 
 moral accountability by pointing out that the action 
 was rendered necessary by circumstances, or by 
 some strange solicitation, or some inherent weak¬ 
 ness transmitted from a remote past through a line 
 of ancestors. In fact, however, we could not have 
 acted at all, save as there was reference in the 
 motive to a Self, which we are, and by whose de¬ 
 cision the action is performed. 
 
 The motive may have come to us from the out¬ 
 side ; it could not move us till it was taken inside, 
 and made an element in our ideal of what is good 
 for us. When we act, therefore, whatever the 
 prompting may be, whencesoever it may have 
 arisen,and howsoever strong it maybe, we act in name 
 and by the power of the Self or Personality, which 
 we are. Medical science and criminal law neces¬ 
 sarily, to a large extent, discount this aspect of 
 accountabilicy, and the treatment of criminals will 
 be profoundly modified by the scientific doctrine of 
 heredity. In our judgments of one another, also, 
 we are bound in charity to restrain our condemna- 
 
io8 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 tion by remembering the nature of the solicitations 
 to evil that have beset any individual sinner. But 
 in judging ourselves, we are never to allow any 
 smattering of scientific knowledge to delude us into 
 believing that we are not accountable for our actions. 
 In dealing with the sunken and degraded also, we 
 will be doing them no good if we condone their evil 
 by a theory which denies to them capacity of re¬ 
 pentance and reformation. We have still to charge 
 upon them their actions as their own. This will 
 lead them into conviction of sin. It will at the 
 same time point the way of deliverance. They are 
 not mere products of circumstances. They are 
 personalities, and may rise above circumstances, in 
 virtue of that very power by which they have de¬ 
 graded themselves. Christianity differs from the 
 ethics of materialism at once in the severity and in 
 the hopefulness of its view of man. It lays upon 
 man the burden of his guilt, and at the same time 
 preaches to him the hope of deliverance ; and it 
 does both, because it clings to the conception, itself 
 justified by the ripest philosophy of the day—of 
 man as a Self, Self-determined and responsible, in 
 all his actions. 
 
 (&.) Moral Choice .—To man thus standing at the 
 centre of his moral life, determining its issues, there 
 is revealed, as we saw in considering Rom. ii. 14, 15 
 {see above, p. 87), the will of God, progressively, 
 through nature, law, and Christ. To this revela¬ 
 tion conscience bears witness, testifying that it is 
 laid as an obligative upon a being, morally consti¬ 
 tuted as man is, to do this will, and choose it as the 
 supreme regulative principle of his life, promising, 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 109 
 
 at the same time, that if he will do this, he shall 
 attain to the fulness of his own nature. 
 
 In the nature of the case, therefore, there comes 
 in every moral history a period of crisis in which 
 the great decision has to be made, and the man has 
 to identify himself with the supreme good and right, 
 or else to decline to do so. In this position the 
 man stands alone. Before him are the two ways. 
 He, a personal being, self-determining, and respon¬ 
 sible, must choose. Neither God nor man can fix 
 his choice for him. In what intellectual form, or 
 under what circumstances this choice will present 
 itself to any individual man, will vary according 
 to differences of age, rank, descent, education, 
 occupation. Each individual history has some¬ 
 thing in it unique. Fundamentally, however, the 
 alternative lies between God and the world, be¬ 
 tween Christ and self. With profound insight the 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews thus represents 
 the decision of Moses, as lying between “ the plea¬ 
 sures of sin” and “the reproach of Christ” (Heb. 
 xi. 24-26). In all the Bible biographies we see the 
 same issue presented. We read it in the leading 
 characters of secular history. It belongs to every 
 individual man. Nothing can exceed the solemnity 
 of this thought. 
 
 The question is grievously complicated by the 
 sinful bias of our nature. We could imagine a 
 moral development in which this crisis was passed 
 through simply without any strain put upon the 
 will. The man would see the good, and forthwith 
 make himself one with it, clearly discerning that it 
 was at once an obligation binding on him, and the 
 
no 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 condition of his own welfare. In fact, however, men 
 do not invariably and easily make this decision. 
 The first instinct is to decline to make this decision. 
 The prevailing tendency is to oppose to the supre¬ 
 macy of the will of God the independence of self-will. 
 The prevailing delusion is that this independence 
 constitutes freedom, that by surrendering this inde¬ 
 pendence a man, in some sort, injures himself, and 
 deprives himself of his rights. Whereas the truth 
 is, that in refusing to identify himself with the will 
 of God, which is the very law of his well-being, a 
 man does himself deadly injury, and brings himself 
 into bondage. Self-will is not freedom ; it is servi¬ 
 tude of a peculiarly galling nature. The will, de^ 
 dining to accept the will of God, loses its freedom, 
 and becomes the slave of external solicitations. It 
 may often be noted that a man has a weak will, 
 weak in respect to good, incapable of stedfast pur¬ 
 suit of righteousness, while the same man has a 
 strong will toward evil. That is to say, he has re¬ 
 jected the will of God, which, being accepted, 
 would endow him with freedom and strength, and, 
 in consequence, his will power has been submerged 
 by strong desires and passions, and acts only towards 
 their gratification. Young men ought to understand 
 that, when they say or think, that the life of obedi¬ 
 ence to God is poor-spirited and unmanly, while the 
 life of self-gratification is gallant and free, they are 
 exactly reversing the true estimate of things. That 
 life is heroic, noble, in the highest sense manly, 
 which is under the dominion of Christ. That life 
 is poor, empty, and unworthy of man’s true dignity 
 which is under no guidance but that of self-will. 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 hi 
 
 (c.) Self-surrender .—We now see wherein true 
 freedom consists. It does not lie in mere arbitrari¬ 
 ness of will. It is reached through self-surrender. 
 It consists in the identity of man’s will with God’s 
 will. When man’s will has thus been yielded to 
 God, it is for the first time free and strong, because 
 now it wills that which is the highest good for man. 
 The greatest proof and illustration are to be found in 
 Christ. No one will question His complete man¬ 
 hood, His entire and glorious strength of character ; 
 yet we see how He received His will, not as an 
 independent power to be grasped at, but as an 
 independence to be always and wholly yielded up 
 (John iv. 34; v. 30 ; vi. 38. The outcome of His 
 redemption work, moreover, is viewed in the New 
 Testament as the freedom of man, a freedom which 
 consists in emancipation from self-will, and harmony 
 with the will of God, a freedom which, as it is main¬ 
 tained through perpetual surrender, issues in a 
 splendid fixity which renders any other choice 
 than that of the will of God impossible (John 
 viii. 31, 32 ; Rom. viii. 21 ; 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; 1 Peter 
 ii. 16). A man’s true liberty is not inconsistent 
 with his being the bond slave of Christ, but is in 
 truth only attained through his thus wholly yielding 
 himself to Christ. This thought finds expression in 
 Tennyson’s sublime invocation introductory to his 
 great poem “In Memoriam,” where he attributes to 
 Christ the perfect ideal of manhood, and points out 
 how we may become assimilated to it. 
 
 “ Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest, manhood thou: 
 
 Our wills are ours we know not how; 
 
 Our wills are ours to make them thine.” 
 
112 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 2. The Training of the Will. —Such being 
 the true idea of freedom of will and strength of 
 character, our aim must be to train our wills in 
 steady and habitual concentration upon the will of 
 God, so that we may will to do God’s will strenu¬ 
 ously, resolutely, in complete mastery over every 
 opposing solicitation. A most important part of 
 this training, no doubt, belongs to the period when 
 we are integral parts of the home. At this stage 
 parents are under most solemn obligation to train the 
 wills of their children. In the home children ought 
 to be taught by precept—above all, by example that 
 self-indulgence is not the highest good, that self- 
 denial is the path to true greatness and happiness. 
 Soon, however, the training passes into our own 
 hands. Here we have to contend with a great 
 evil. There is, as it were, a subtle and unexpressed 
 consciousness of the impending crisis, spoken of 
 above, when the alternative of God and the world, 
 Christ and self, presents itself to the will; with a 
 persistent desire to evade the necessity of choice. 
 Many who would be averse to choosing the evil 
 employ, with instinctive cunning, every artifice to 
 avoid having to choose at all. They will, for 
 instance, submit to all kinds of general exhortation; 
 but will shrink from and resent anything like dealing 
 at close quarters. Let them understand that Inde¬ 
 cision is the worst kind of Decision. There is more 
 hope for those who have clearly decided for Self, 
 than for those who decline to decide for Christ. 
 The necessity of deciding in one direction or the 
 other is well brought out in Browning’s poem of 
 “ The Statue and the Bust.” Here we have the 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 n 3 
 
 story of two persons who refrained from committing 
 a sin, not from any sense of its sinfulness, or any 
 distinct choice of the right, but simply from want of 
 resolution, what in Scotland we call fecklessness. 
 This the poet regards, not as a virtue, but actually 
 as a worse evil than the commission of the sin 
 would have been : 
 
 “ The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
 Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, 
 
 Tho’ the end in sight was a vice, I say.” 
 
 The undecided man becomes emasculated. His 
 will dissolves into a kind of pulp. He is henceforth 
 good for nothing, a moral waste, which even the 
 Devil must despise ! 
 
 All means, therefore, must be used to strengthen 
 the will, i.e., to deliver it from the ignominy of irresolu¬ 
 tion, and the caprice of self-assertion, and train it 
 to a ready and determined acceptance and perform¬ 
 ance of the will of God. Among these, which in 
 the nature of the case vary from one individual to 
 another, may be mentioned specially : 
 
 ( a .) Submission to all constituted authority. —This 
 may be urged as a duty from various points of view 
 (Rom. xiii. 1-5 ; Titus iii. 1 ; 1 Peter ii. 13-18 ; v. 5 ; 
 Heb. xiii. 17). But the valuable effect of such sub¬ 
 mission as a discipline for the will ought not to be 
 overlooked. Young men find the period in which 
 they are passing beyond the stage of childhood, and 
 yet remain under the family roof, often very trying. 
 The restraints of parental authority they feel to be 
 irksome. Painful scenes are apt to take place; 
 sometimes ending in rupture, the young man fling¬ 
 ing off the restraints altogether, and, being now 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 able to support himself, leaving home for the sweets 
 of liberty. Let it be granted that the situation is 
 in itself difficult, that parents are not always wise, 
 and are apt to forget that their sons are no longer 
 children. Yet let young men be well assured that the 
 self-mastery gained by voluntary submission is worth 
 all the pains, and that the sweets of liberty are 
 dearly bought by the forfeiture of a most valuable and 
 much needed training in self-surrender. Similarly in 
 the church, officebearers and Christian workers are 
 often persuaded that they have plans wiser than those 
 adopted by majorities in courts or societies. They 
 feel it irksome to submit to conditions thus imposed 
 on them ; and they permit themselves to use rude 
 and violent language, or even to withdraw altogether 
 from the work. Here also it may be freely admitted 
 that the individual is often right, and the majority 
 wrong. None the less, submission is better than 
 self-assertion ; better in the long run for the work, 
 and better in any case for the individual as an 
 exercise in self-control. 
 
 (b.) Prompt performance of every duty to which 
 conscience bears witness .—Procrastination is the thief 
 of time ; but it steals more than time. It steals will 
 power. By every duty postponed in wantonness or 
 idleness, the will is weakened. Its action, in higher 
 things, becomes enfeebled, and the whole Christian 
 life suffers. Those whose lives are not regulated by 
 the factory or school bell need to be specially care¬ 
 ful. Students, ministers, and professional men 
 generally, need to see to it that the absence of a 
 mechanical regulation of their life is compensated 
 for by the more energetic inward control. 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 ii5 
 
 ( c.) Gymnastic exercises .—It is true that the best 
 means of training lie in the ordinary incidents of life, 
 as these emerge day by day. But we ought not to 
 despise special means, devised as gymnastic exer¬ 
 cises, for the training and strengthening of the 
 will. It is well known that Romanism has been 
 skilful in elaborating such exercises, till in the 
 system of Jesuitism the system has reached a mar¬ 
 vellous completeness. The danger here is that what 
 began as healthy exercise has become legal bond¬ 
 age ; and the result has been that the will instead 
 of being strengthened has been crushed. In the 
 typical Jesuit, his will has been extinguished, and 
 has been replaced by a non-moral habit of obedience 
 to external authority. The Scriptures, however, 
 recognise three leading forms of exercise, and it will 
 be a pity if our recoil from Romanism should lead 
 us to neglect them. These are Fasting, Alms-giving, 
 and Prayer (Matt. vi. 1-18). These are duties which 
 are enjoined from other points of view ; but they 
 serve also as means of training the will, leading it to 
 identification with the will of God, and emancipation 
 from and mastery over the instincts, passions, and 
 powers of human nature. Fasting, including all 
 kinds of restraint in food and drink, aids the mastery 
 of the will over physical demands. Alms-giving, 
 including every form of Christian liberality, aids the 
 mastery of the will over the instincts of accumu¬ 
 lation. Prayer, including all ordinances of worship, 
 aids the mastery of the will over the whole nature, 
 as it tends, through its sinful bias, to turn away from 
 God. Regularity in the practice of these exercises 
 will produce that ease and steadiness in the opera- 
 
n6 
 
 CHRIS TIAN CHA RA CTER : 
 
 tion of the will, which characterises the progressive 
 development of Christian character. 
 
 3. The Operation of the Will. —The aim of 
 the will in the culture of Christian character is 
 clear. It is to realise in man as an individual, and 
 in the whole field of his life, the will of God as 
 supreme; or, in other words, to vindicate the 
 sovereignty of Christ in man. As that is progres¬ 
 sively achieved, the character grows towards its 
 goal of Christlikeness. We bring these pages to 
 a close by a too brief consideration of the work 
 of will in the discharge of this its great vocation. 
 (a.) The material .—In general, the material with 
 which will has to work is human nature, in its ma¬ 
 terial, mental and moral aspects, a brief survey of 
 which has been taken above. This material, how¬ 
 ever, is not the same in each individual specimen of 
 the race, else the work of will would tend to be 
 mechanical, and the product of its operation vary no 
 more than the product of a number of machines 
 working up in the same way the same raw material. 
 In fact, it differs infinitely from man to man. No 
 two specimens of the race are entirely alike. The 
 differences, therefore, defy enumeration. Some 
 broad divisions, however, may be traced. In the 
 first place, there are differences due to special 
 constitution. First —Sex. Obviously a whole world 
 of differences, physical, mental, and moral, are* con¬ 
 jured up by this word ; and a whole volume devoted 
 to the subject would probably leave each sex in some 
 considerable degree unsatisfied with the treatment. 
 Suffice it to say that the sexes have each their weak¬ 
 nesses, their points of strength, their special adapta- 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 117 
 
 bilities, with all of which will has to reckon in the 
 making of character. Secojid —Temperament. Each 
 individual has a peculiar temperament, or, as it has 
 been called, “ fundamental mood,” which determines 
 the special aspect that the character will present 
 as it is wrought up by the will. It is usual to give 
 a classification of four temperaments, which pro¬ 
 bably corresponds roughly with the facts, though it 
 is entirely unscientific, and cannot be applied in any 
 abstract way in the study of special cases. 
 
 The phlegmatic temperament has its fundamental 
 mood in rest or stability ; its prevailing temptation 
 in insensibility and sloth. The sanguine tempera¬ 
 ment has its fundamental mood in ready suscep¬ 
 tibility and openness to impressions from without: 
 its prevailing temptation in flightiness and super¬ 
 ficiality. The melancholic temperament has its 
 fundamental mood in solitary withdrawal into one’s 
 self; its prevailing temptation, in moodiness, un¬ 
 practical dreaming, and useless sorrow. The choleric 
 temperament has its fundamental mood in impulsive 
 energy, eager for employment in the world around ; 
 its prevailing temptation in obstinacy, narrowness, 
 and bad temper. Plainly the task of will is endlessly 
 varied by such distinctions. Third —Talent. In¬ 
 dividuals vary in their special gifts. These form 
 the determining elements in the special work the 
 individual undertakes, and in most important ways 
 mould the life he is to live. The will has a mighty 
 task in the control and consecration of such gifts 
 and abilities, a task varying as do the special powers 
 of mind or body. 
 
 In the second place, there are wide differences, 
 
Ii8 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 due to special circumstances, all of which demand 
 peculiar treatment. Such are : Age. It is obviously 
 impossible to apply the same treatment to the child 
 as to the man, or expect the same results from the 
 one as from the other. The will has a distinct task 
 and a distinct mode of working in each case, and 
 the product will also vary. There is a child type 
 of Christian character, and there is a manly type. 
 Rank. The same opportunities do not belong to 
 the poor man as to the rich ; the same work does 
 not fall to him to do. Each, therefore, has special 
 lines of duty to follow, and in each special virtues 
 are called for. Calling. Each career, handicraft, 
 trade, or profession makes necessary special exer¬ 
 cise of powers, affords special aspects of self-denial, 
 and provides special forms of temptation, all of 
 which require special attention from the will. 
 
 These differences, therefore, cause the operation 
 of will to vary in each individual. Hence the moral 
 life loses all suspicion of dreariness or monotony. 
 The study of character in others, the culture of 
 character in ourselves, becomes profoundly interest¬ 
 ing. En?iui is impossible to the man who under¬ 
 stands his business in the culture of his own char¬ 
 acter. His moral life unfolds itself to him as a 
 history wherein there are victories and defeats, dis¬ 
 appointments and achievements that rival, and in¬ 
 deed excel, in thrilling interest any that are recorded 
 in fiction. 
 
 This also makes it impossible for one man to 
 apply any set of rules to another, and teaches 
 moderation in judgment and charity in opinion. 
 In no case do we know precisely the material which 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 119 
 
 the will had before it. Therefore we cannot judge 
 what means are best, how long the process may 
 take, or through what stages it may have to pass. 
 Let the parable of the seed growing secretly teach 
 us wisdom in our estimate of ourselves and of others 
 (Mark iv. 26-29). 
 
 These differences, however, are not differences of 
 fundamental type of character. The one supreme 
 type is Christ. This unity, however, is not a bare 
 hard identity, a kind of Procrustes bed. Rather is 
 it the unity of life, which admits of differences, and 
 is indeed their perfect harmony. We are required 
 to “ be perfect ” ; but the perfection of one is not the 
 perfection of another, while in both it is Christlike- 
 ness. In Christ we live, and to Christ we grow. 
 Yet we all remain ourselves, with distinct individu¬ 
 ality, gaining, not losing, through our relation to 
 Christ, the fulness of our personal being, as it is 
 said, “ Ye are complete in Him” (Col. ii. 10). 
 
 (1 b .) The Process .—Infinitely varied as the opera¬ 
 tions of the will must be in the formation of 
 character, there are three steps which are clearly 
 distinguishable, and stand in closest relations to 
 one another. 
 
 First .—The Act. An object comes within the 
 sphere of man’s conscious life. His will is now sum¬ 
 moned to action. It may either accept this object, 
 and make it one of the modes in which the Self seeks 
 the ideal good, or it may reject the object, and cast 
 it out of the line of the man’s moral advance. In 
 this act, accordingly, the will puts forth its energy. 
 This act manifests the Self. Action, therefore, is 
 most momentous. There are historic actions, which 
 
120 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER : 
 
 involved tremendous issues, as when Louis XIV. 
 signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 
 reality each action we perform has endless conse¬ 
 quences, as it passes into and determines the course 
 of our moral life. 
 
 Second .—The Habit. Acts repeated link them¬ 
 selves into a chain of habit, in which the distinct 
 and separate activity of the will tends to become 
 ever more completely submerged in the dominance 
 of custom, while yet the habit as a whole is the 
 work of will, and implies responsibility. A man 
 may commit a sin which is simply an incident in 
 a habit formed long ago, and scarcely required 
 a specific act of will to bring it about; yet for 
 that sin the man is responsible, seeing that it may 
 be traced back to original initiative of his will. 
 There is nothing more tragic in moral history than 
 the ease with which repeated acts grow into habits 
 whose iron weight shall make life a burden, and 
 deliverance all but impossible. Alcoholic excess 
 presents an obvious illustration, but the process is 
 not confined to sins of the body. It goes on even 
 with greater subtlety, rapidity, and power in sins 
 more refined in quality. Sins of imagination tend 
 to become readily habitual, and are hard to over¬ 
 come. Untruthfulness may become a vice in those 
 who recognise and even aspire after a high type of 
 spiritual experience. No man is safe, unless he 
 watch with scrupulous care and most jealous in¬ 
 spection the transition of act into habit. 
 
 Third. —Character. Acts and habits are the fibre 
 out of which the vesture of character is woven. This 
 is the final issue of the operations of will. 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 121 
 
 Here then we have a solemn sequence, Acts, 
 Habits, Character. Now, however, we have to add 
 a fact even more significant. Not only does will 
 make character ; but character fixes will. This re¬ 
 action of character upon will increases in incalcul¬ 
 able degree the movement of the soul upward or 
 downward. Behind the will there gathers the whole 
 force of a character which will has been developing, 
 either in union with the highest good or in opposition 
 to it. Thus the will is constrained to act in a de¬ 
 finite direction by a force it has itself stored up, and 
 to which it has itself given a certain tendency. The 
 most conspicuous Biblical example is that of 
 Pharaoh, whose character thus hardened his heart, 
 and determined his will to evil, so that his being 
 hardened was at once his own doing and the judg¬ 
 ment of God upon him. In literature, we have 
 Macbeth, who is caught in the meshes of his own 
 action, and has his future determined by his past. 
 In the life of every individual, as his moral history 
 proceeds, it becomes more and more true that the 
 act is the embodiment of the character, so that, ob¬ 
 serving the conduct, we can read the character, or, 
 knowing the character, we can predict the conduct. 
 Let young men and women well understand that 
 moral life is not the sphere of caprice, that here also 
 law bears sway. “ Be not deceived ; God is not 
 mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
 also reap. 5 ’ Sow selfwill, and you will reap ultimate 
 hardening in antagonism to God and goodness. 
 
 (c.) The Power .—This study of character will have 
 failed altogether if it has not brought out the twofold 
 aspect of the development of the Christian type. In 
 
122 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: 
 
 the first two chapters we sought to discern the 
 divine aspect. Since then we have been dwelling on 
 the human. Let us now bring them both together. 
 Christian character is at one and the same time the 
 work of will and the work of grace. It is God’s 
 work ; yet it is not wrought apart from man or 
 against his will. It is man’s work ; yet it is not 
 wrought without God—would be a miserable failure 
 without Him. Philosophically or theologically, it is 
 very difficult to combine these aspects in one view 
 or statement. As matter of experience or moral 
 teaching, the matter is plain enough. No unsophis¬ 
 ticated mind is ever perplexed by hearing that the 
 power is all of God, while at the same time the end 
 will never be reached unless he put forth all the 
 energy of his will to reach it. This may be called a 
 paradox, but it is one whose solution lies in life, not 
 in theory. Christ is the source of Christian charac¬ 
 ter. He tells us what it is. We see it perfectly 
 realised in Him. By His redeeming work, it has 
 been made a possibility for us. By His indwelling 
 through the Spirit, we also are enabled to reach it. 
 
 Two things, therefore, we have to do. First .—To 
 appropriate the divine power thus stored up in 
 Christ, and communicated by the Spirit. We do 
 this mainly in actings of soul toward Christ. ( a ) 
 Receiving Him ; John i. 12. He is in us our life ; 
 Col. iii. 3. Without Him we can do nothing ; John 
 xv. 5. ( b ) Abiding in Him ; John xv. 4-7. We are 
 
 to maintain this attitude towards Him of constant 
 receptivity so that His life and power may be poured 
 into us. ( c ) Beholding Him ; 2 Cor. iii. 18. He is 
 the revelation of God, the revelation of holiness. 
 
ITS CULTURE. 
 
 123 
 
 We are transfigured by beholding. If we fulfil these 
 conditions, the power of God which Christ has and 
 is becomes ours, and is available for our growth in 
 Christlikeness. Thus He of God is made unto 
 us sanctification ; 1 Cor. i. 30. 
 
 Second .—To set to work ourselves in the name of 
 Christ, and in dependence on His Spirit. The in¬ 
 tensity of our personal responsibility, and the abund¬ 
 ance of our resources are expressed in such passages 
 as Phil. ii. 12, 13 ; and 2 Peter i. 3-7. We can work 
 out, only because God works in. We can add on 
 our part diligence, only because we are partakers of 
 the divine nature. Similarly because God graciously 
 works in us, therefore we must work out our salva¬ 
 tion ; and because we have been made partakers of 
 so mighty a privilege, we must see to it that no 
 diligence is lacking on our part. By sparing no 
 pains on this business of cultivating the Christian 
 character, not only are we furthering our own highest 
 welfare, but we are rendering noblest service to our 
 fellowmen. Not by finished products, if such there 
 were, would men be so much benefited, as they are 
 by characters, which, though imperfect, “ are being 
 changed.” We may never do any outstanding deed 
 for the amelioration of the race ; but if we havelived 
 to be light and strength to some struggling soul, 
 we shall not have lived in vain. There is no higher 
 honour than to have said of us the words, which 
 Pompilia spoke regarding her friend, as she passed 
 into the eternal day :— 
 
 ‘ * Through such souls alone 
 God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light 
 For us i’ the dark to rise by; and I rise.” 
 
124 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHAR A CTER. 
 
 Then, when the process of discipline is ended, our 
 imperfections shall fall from us, and we shall reach 
 the goal. We shall be like Him, for we shall see 
 Him as He is. 
 
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