Address —
[Receive this as a faithful expression of my regards for you : and pray for me, that what I desire in your behalf, I may richly experience in my own soul.]
••John xvii. 3. 2 Cor. ir. 6. '^ 2 Cor. iii. 18. ' Eph. iii. 18, ip.
THE christian's GRACES.
2 Pet. i. 5 — 9. Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue] and to virtue , knowledge; and to knowledge, tem- perance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, hrotlierly-kind7ie<is; and to brotherhj-kindness, charity. For, if these things bei?iyo7i, andahound, they make you that ye shall neither he barren nor imfruitjul in the k?iow-
ledge
ledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
GREAT and unspeakable are the blessings vouch- safed to us by the Gospel : for in it " God hath given to us all things that pertain unto life and godliness ;" and " through the exceeding great and precious pro- mises contained in it, we are made partakers of a Divine nature, and are enabled to escape the corrup- tions which are in the world through lust ^" Yet we are not to suppose that these blessings will flow down upon us without any effort on our part to obtain them. We must, if I may so speak, be " workers together with God ;" or as my text expresses it, must " give all diligence to add" one grace to another, in order to our growing up into a perfect man.
Were we to enter minutely into every part of this exhortation, we should only distract your minds by too great a diversity of matter. It will be more in- structive and edifying to compress the subject, so as to preserve its unity, and to bring before you in one point of view what we conceive to be the mind of the Holy Ghost in this important passage. For this end we will commend to your attention,
I. The import of the exhortation —
Two things we see in it ;
1 . What are the graces which we are called to ex- ercise—
[It is here taken for granted that we have " faith ;" for, in truth, we have no pretensions to call ourselves Christians till we have believed in Christ, and ai*e united to him as branches of the living vine.
Assuming then that we are true Believers, we must "add to our faith virtue." By virtue we are not to understand that general assem])lage of graces which in modern language is as- sociated with that term ; but courage, which is absolutely neces- sary to the Chi-istian's welfare. A man who will be f;\ithful to his God, and walk worthy of his profession, will have much to contend with, l)<)th from widiout, and from within : and, if he be not endued with fortitude, he will be in danger of yield- ing to discouragement, and turning back from his profession.
Even
' ver. 3, 4.
1168.] THE christian's GRACES. 159
Even the sneers of an ungodly world are not easy to bear : and thousands, through the fear of them, have made shipwreck of their faith. We must therefore be bold, if we would be " good soldiers of Jesus Christ."
" To our virtue we must add knowledge." By " knowledge" I understand, not general information, but wisdom and pru- dence, without which our courage may lead us astray, and prove injurious to the cause which we profess to serve. We must seek " a spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind'^" Among the children of Issachar, we are told, " there were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do ^" Such should we be. The same conduct, if pursued at all times and under all circumstances, would be very absurd : and perhaps scarcely in any thing does the adult Christian differ from the child more than in the exercise of " sound wisdom and discretion," by which he is enabled to avoid the errors of the inexperienced '^j and to " walk wisely before God in a perfect way'."