156 THE UNFOLDING OF CHARACTER
decay together, so near is the affinity and sympathy between them.
^ Every added virtue strengthens and transfigures every other virtue. Every addition to character affects the colour of the entire character. Kuskin, in his great work, Modern Painters, devotes one chapter to what he calls " The Law of Help." And here is the paragraph in which he defines the law. " In true composition, everything not only helps everything else a little, but helps with its utmost power. Every atom is in full energy ; and all that energy is kind. Not a line, nor spark of colour, but is doing its very best, and that best is aid." It is even so in the composition of character. Every addition I make to my character adds to the general enrichment. The principle has its reverse application. To withdraw a single grace is to impoverish every element in the religious life. "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all." 1
(2) "In your faith supply (or furnish) virtue." Now the Greek word translated " supply " is a very full and suggestive one. It is a word with a history. It takes us back to the days in old Athens when it was reckoned a high honour by a citizen to be asked to defray the expenses of a public ceremony. It means to furnish the chorus for the theatre ; so that to the minds of many of those to whom the words were first addressed, the thought might have been suggested that these graces would come into the life like a chorus. They would come singing and dancing into it, filling it with joy and loveliest music. A saint of old thus carolled : *' Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." And here in the New Testament we have the Christian graces introduced as a chorus into life, which would be dull and flat and discordant without them.
^ Have we not often wondered how endless the variety of music that can be won from the simple scale of seven with its octaves ? As endless is the variety of soul-music that will flow from this simple scale of grace. And nothing but music will come from it. Erom a musical instrument quite correctly tuned, and on which the scale is faultless, the most discordant noises may be produced ; but this cannot be in the spiritual sphere. Given the gamut of graces, all discord is banished from the life. Life will become one continual song, not always in the major mode, but
^ J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, Sept. 21, 1905.
2 PETER I. 5-7 157
perhaps most beautiful of all when it modulates into the minor in life's dark days ; but a song it shall be from beginning to end, from the keynote and starting-point of Faith swelling onward and forward till it closes in the grand finale of the upper octave Love.^
^ Architecture is said to be " frozen music." This is true of the commonest wayside wall. What is it that makes the sight of a well-built wall so pleasing to the eye ? What is it that makes building a wall such an interesting employment that children take instinctively to it when they are in a suitable place, and have suitable materials at hand ? Is it not the love of symmetry, the delight in shaping large and small, rough and smooth, pieces of stone, adapting them one to the other, and placing them in such a way that together they make a symmetrical structure ? Every wall, be it rude as a moorland dyke, represents the love of order and the difficulties that have been overcome in making the stones of the wall to harmonize with one another. And if we see this curious harmony in the humblest rustic build- ing, how grandly does it come out in the magnificent Gothic cathedral, where every part blends faultlessly with every other part, and carries out the design of the architect ; and clustered pillar, and aerial arch, and groined roof soar up in matchless symmetry, and the soul is held spellbound by the poetry which speaks through the entire structure.^
I.
Faith.
The direction, " Add to your faith virtue," or as the Eevised Version has it, " In your faith supply virtue," does not recognize faith as co-ordinate with these other virtues, but derives from faith the various excellences of character which are named. In naming each and all, it presupposes faith as the root from which all proceed. In this sense the Christian ideal of living begins with and presupposes a religion or a personal trust and love towards Christ as the object of love and confidence. It binds us to Him by an act of allegiance, in which are blended honour and gratitude, love and hope.
1, It must not be forgotten that this whole passage, with all the mighty possibilities which the sweep of its circle includes,
1 J. M. Gibson, Tlic Glory of Life, 65,
* H. Macmillan, The Mystery of Grace, 103.
158 THE UNFOLDING OF CHARACTER
proceeds on the assumption that certain great preliminary and vital transactions have taken place between the soul and God. Preparatory to this rich evolution there had to be an adequate involution. This is not merely assumed by the Apostle. It is stated. Look at verses 1, 2, and 3. " Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained a like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ : Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue." Here, then, everything has been preceded by a process of moral adjustment, the harmonization of the individual will with the universal, and the insertion of a new life-principle which holds in its close-shut hand the promise and the potency of endless spiritual progression, of ever-growing similarity to God.