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call God a perfect being, it is difficult to see how suffering could produce either of these perfections. Suffering could not create infinite goodness; nor could suffering create sinlessness. Trial and sorrow may develop, unfold and strengthen character; but trial and sorrow cannot create any divine elements not already in the soul. Human perfection may be unfolded by trial, but divine perfection not. Suffering was necessary to make the character of Jesus complete, or, as it is expressed in the Epistle to the Colossians, "perfect and complete in all the will of God."

Did you ever notice the frequent exhortations of the apostles to this integral, all-sided goodness? How they multiply and heap up their lists of virtues which they beg their readers to cultivate! Peter tells them to add to their faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and charity. James begs them to make their lives symmetrical by adding doing to hearing, works to faith, and the wisdom which is pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. Paul tells them to have the fruits of the spirit-love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Such instances show the strong conviction in the minds of the apostles that solitary virtues die, and that only a full, complete development has in it the promise of safety.

This whole method of speaking is predicated on the idea that human nature can have a symmetrical development, every part of which is important to the integrity of the whole. The soul, like the body, may have a partial or a full discipline. A scholar develops his brain, but not his muscles; the laborer, his muscles, but not his brain. One trade cultivates quickness of perception in the eye, another delicacy of touch. A true physical education will develop all parts of the body. So a true spiritual education will

develop all parts of the soul. This, then, was the meaning of Jesus in his command "Be ye perfect." He meant to say, "Be fully unfolded in your soul." He commanded a symmetrical and full development of character. And the apostles, as we have seen, insist on the same duty. James wishes all Christians to be "perfect and entire, wanting nothing." Paul tells the Colossians that Epaphras, a fellowcitizen of theirs, is always praying for them that they "may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."

I propose to speak of this symmetrical development of the soul, or integral Christian education; to show how much we have lost sight of it; how one-sided and partial our Christian life is; what the evils of this are, and how the natural cure for these evils will be found in a better study and imitation of the human character of Christ as the ideal standard of this perfection.

The Scripture says, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God." That is, put Christianity into everything you do. But into how small a part of our life do we usually put our Christianity! Some persons put it all into Sunday. They think Christianity belongs to the Sabbath, and if they go to church on Sunday, that is all that is asked of them. Others have a few prayermeetings on other days; they have family prayers; they abstain from certain amusements; they use a certain sanctified language; and that is all of their religion. Their Christianity does not make them more honest in business, more generous, kind or humane. They grind the poor; they tell lies over their counter; they do a few things to the glory of God, but only a few. Christianity was meant to educate the head, the heart and the hand-spirit, soul and body. Some Christians confine it to the head. It is a theory, a creed, a way of thinking. Others confine it to the heart. It is emotion, feeling, sentiment. It is having

a good warm time at the conference meeting; or else, perhaps, listening to beautiful sentiments, beautiful discourses. It is being converted or having a religious experience; feeling a great deal of sorrow for sin, and a great deal of love and trust in Jesus Christ. Others make Christianity an outward practice only; religious practices, or going through ceremonies; moral practices, such as paying one's debts, giving a little to the poor. So one class of Christians are moral Christians; and another class are orthodox Christians; and another class are emotional Christians, fervent and full of feeling; and another are churchmen, devoted to the church, its feasts and fasts and ceremonies. So do men put asunder what God has joined together. Some are pious, but not honest; others honest, but not pious; some are zealous and narrow; others liberal, but cold; some love God, but not their brother others love man, but forget God. Those who belong to the church are sectarian; those who are unsectarian are indifferent to all positive religion. They are so indifferent that they would be willing to let all the churches be closed, Sunday be abolished, the Bible forgotten, and have man live without God or hope in the world. And this they sometimes call being liberal.

Reverence is a noble virtue. Shakspeare calls it "the angel of the world." It continually lifts the soul to that which is above us; to the ineffable beauty, the perfect goodness, the infinite majesty, which is so high, so far, yet which we can see, love, and adore. We rise ourselves by adoring that which is better than we are. It adds the charm of modesty to our manliness; it destroys the vile habit of self-conceit, of egotism, of mean vanity. It is the one virtue of the soul which is always tending upward by its proper motion; upward to something higher, purer, better.

And yet this very fervor of reverence, unless it be balanced by the opposite fervor of freedom and self-reliance, of free individual judgment, tends to make men the slaves of the vilest superstitions. Reverence, alone, blinds, fetters, and so degrades the soul. Unenlightened by personal intelligence, it becomes abject submission to whatever claims respect because it is old, or strong, or terrible ; that which was ordained for life becomes death.

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There is another charming quality which makes us ready to sympathize with every one around us. Some persons seem all sweetness. They would not harm a fly They are ready to feel with you, and are so tender, so trusting, so like sunshine and summer air, that they bring balm and fragrance into our life. These are the loving

souls, who are all affection and good-will. And yet, if destitute of the strength which comes from conscience, the firmness created by the sight of principles, these natures may become the hardest and the coldest of all. Unable to be thoroughly faithful, because of their weakness, they turn sour, hard and cruel. Thus, love without truth ceases to be love, and becomes cruelty.

On the other hand, truth without love ceases to be truth, and becomes a lie. The cold intellect, divorced from the heart, cannot see the truth. Instead of truth it sees opinions, which are always one-sided, and therefore false. The power of truth is not there. The life seems to have gone out of it. If we pursue truth with our intellect alone, without heart, we become dogmatic, bigoted, narrow; and at last believe because we choose to believe, not because we really see the truth. So that we become liars at last from a one-sided truthfulness.

The Catholic Church is essentially a church of sentiment. It aims at adapting itself to all the wants of men; of suiting itself to every human need. It has organized

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'good-will to man "into a system, and has carried it on by machinery. It has excluded free thought and enslaved the intellect, lest these should do harm. So at last from love it has committed the most atrocious cruelties; burnt alive thousands of martyrs, and laid all Europe waste. Its love, divorced from truth, has become hatred.

Protestanism was born in the determinatian to be true to conscience. It wished to see with its own eyes, to exercise its own mind, to say only what it really saw. It made private judgment its motto. But thus it became too intellectual, and doctrinal; it lost the sense of unity, of brotherly love; then fell into divisions and disputes, and finally exaggerated its dogmas till they hardened into the iron creed of Calvinism, and the truth of God was changed into terrible falsehoods. Truth divorced from love becomes a lie.

Perhaps we may now see why Jesus and his apostles insisted on that perfect development of the soul which is complete and entire, wanting nothing. We may also see why faith in Jesus himself, in his perfect human character, as the fulness, the pleroma of humanity, is an essential element in progress. We need a standard of complete human excellence. Jesús has come, in the providence of God, to be that standard. Of his fulness, says the apostle, we have all received, and grace upon grace. The virtues - of each age are one-sided —every period, every party has its fashion of goodness, its own temporary ideal. At one period Christianity is made to consist in ascetic sacrifices. and monkish self-denial. In another it is placed in the study of truth, the desire for intellectual development. In another it is humanity, philanthropy, doing all the good we can to our fellow-men. In another it is piety, mystical raptures of the soul, lost in the sight of things eternal. Sometimes the fashion is Ritualism, laying great stress

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