It is a demand for business vigilance in the realm of the Spirit. We are not to close our eyes and to allow our limbs to hang limp in the expectancy that the Lord will carry us like blind logs. He " made us of clay," but He " formed us men," and as men He purposes that we shall live and move and have our
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154 THE UNFOLDING OF CHARACTER
being. And so He calls for " diligence." It is a word which elsewhere is translated haste, carefulness, business. It is very wonderful how frequently the New Testament takes its similes from the commercial world. "Trade ye herewith till I come." "Look therefore carefully how ye walk, buying up the oppor- tunity." " The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman." In all these varied passages there is a common emphasis upon the necessity of businesslike qualities in our spiritual life. We are called upon to manifest the same earnestness, the same intensity, the same strenuousness in the realm of spiritual enterprise as we do in the search for daily bread.
^ We must bring method into our religion. We must find out the best means of kindling the spirit of praise, and of engaging in quick and ceaseless communion with God, and then we must steadily adhere to these as a business man adheres to well-tested systems in commercial life. We must bring alertness into our religion ; we must watch with all the keenness of an open-eyed speculator, and we must be intent upon "buying up every opportunity for the Lord." We must bring promptness into our religion. When some fervent impulse is glowing in our spirits we must not play with the treasured moment ; we must strike while the iron is hot. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." We must bring holdness into our religion. Timid men make no fine ventures. In the realm of religion it is he who ventures most who acquires most. Our weakness lies in our timidity. Great worlds are waiting for us if only we had the courage to go in and possess them. " Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith ? " And we must bring persistence into our religion. We must not sit down and wail some doleful complaint because the seed sown in the morning did not bring the harvest at night. We must not encourage a spirit of pessimism because our diffi- culties appear insuperable. We must go steadily on, and wear down every resistance in the grace-fed expectancy that we shall assuredly win if we faint not. Such are the characteristics of common diligence which we are to bring into co-operative fellowship with the forces of grace. " Seest thou a man diligent in his business ? he shall stand before kings ; he shall not stand before mean men." ^
2. "Add to your faith virtue" (A.V.). There are various kinds of addition in the world. You may fling a heap of stones
* J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, Sept. 21, 1905.
2 PETER I. 5-7 155
together, without an aim and without a plan, and they fall into some sort of shape under the influence of the law of gravitation. The stones are simply flung together, and no thought is needed to dispose of them; they fall into a certain shape, of necessity. But that is not the addition meant here. There is another kind of addition, when you lay stone to stone according to a plan, when you dress the stones and fit them together for your own purpose, and make for yourselves a home to dwell in, a place to work in, or a building in which you may worship God. That is nearer the meaning of the text, but there is something more than the mere fulfilment of a plan and purpose in the addition of the text. There is the addition which a tree makes to itself year by year, till it expands from the seed to the full majesty of perfect treehood. That addition is determined from within, not merely an addition from without and by an external agency. It is an unfolding from within, it is an addition by which the tree has mastered material once external to itself, transformed it, lifted it to a higher level and made it part of itself. That is nearer the meaning of our text. Yet one more attempt to find the full meaning of this addition. It is like that which boys and girls make to themselves from the day of their birth till they come to the fulness of the stature of perfect manhood and womanhood. They grow by striving, by winning the victory over external matter; they grow till they attain to fulness of bodily stature. But they grow also by feeling, wishing, desiring, by willing and acting, by foreseeing ends and taking means to realize them. They grow by feeling, thinking, willing. And to this kind of growth there is no limit.
(1) The older version has the preposition " to " throughout — " add to your faith virtue," and the rest ; so that virtue, knowledge, and temperance were made to appear as separate, detached things, each of which could be tied or stuck on to the others. " In your faith supply virtue " means something different. It means that faith is the root from which virtue grows up. These graces, in short, are not ready-made articles, which we can appropriate and use mechanically, like the dressed and polished blocks of stone one sees in a builder's yard. Instead, they are as closely related as the members of a living body. They flourish together, and they