In the last place, religion does not
consist in negatives, in stopping this sin and stopping that. The
perfect character can never be produced with a pruning knife.
3. But a third protests: "So be it. I make no attempt to stop sins one
by one. My method is just the opposite.
I COPY THE VIRTUES
one by one."
The difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be
mechanical. One can always tell an engraving from a picture, an
artificial flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one has
somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one by one; the
temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character. Some
one defines a _prig_ as "a creature that is over-fed for its size."
One sometimes finds Christians of this species--over-fed on one side
of their nature, but dismally thin and starved looking on the other.
The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and adding it on to an
otherwise worldly life, is simply grotesque. A rabid temperance
advocate, for the same reason, is often the poorest of creatures,
flourishing on a single virtue, and quite oblivious that his
Temperance is making a worse man of him and not a better.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125