2 Pet. i. 5 — 9. Beside this, (jiving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience godliness ; and to godliness brotherly kindness ; and to bro- therly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor ■unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he teas 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 ob- tain 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
a ver. 3, 4.
2419.] THE CHRISTIAN'S GRACES. l2i)'i
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 exercise —
[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 are 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 assemblage of graces which in modern language is as- sociated with that term ; but courage, which is absolutely ne- cessary to the Christian's welfare. A man who will be faithful to his God, and walk worthy of his profession, will have much to contend with, both from without 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 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 vundh" Among the children of Issachar, we are told, " there were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to doc." 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"1, and to "walk wisely before God in a perfect waye."
To this must " temperance be added." In this term also there is more implied than we generally annex to it. In this