are indeed the marks of Christ's teaching. But as
Christ conceived them they were not passive qualities, but intensely
active energies of the soul. It has been well remarked that[14] there
was a poverty of spirit in the creed of the cynic centuries before
Christianity. There was a meekness in the doctrine of the Stoic long
before the advent of Jesus. But these tenets were very far from being
anticipations of Christ's morality. Cynic poverty of spirit was but the
poor-spiritedness of apathy. Stoic meekness was merely the indifference
of oblivion. But the humility and lowliness of heart, the mercifulness
and peace-seeking which Christ inculcated were essentially powers of
self-restraint, not negative but positive attitudes to life. The motive
was not apathy but love. These qualities were based not on the idea that
life was so poor and undesirable that it was not worthy of consideration,
but upon the conviction that it was so grand and noble, something so far
beyond either pleasure or pain, as to demand the devotion of the entire
self--the mastery and consecration of all a man's powers in the
fulfilment and service of its divine end.

Hence what Christianity did was not so much to institute {195} one type
of character for another as to exhibit for the first time the complete
conception of what human life should be--a new creature, in whom, as in
its great Exemplar, strength and tenderness, courage and meekness,
justice and mercy were alike combined. For, as St. Paul said, in Christ
Jesus there is neither male nor female, but all are as one. And in this
character, as the same apostle finely shows, faith, hope, and charity
have the primary place, not as special virtues which have been added on,
but as the spiritual disposition which penetrates the entire personality
and qualifies its every thought and act.

III

_The Unification of the Virtues_.--While it is desirable, then, to
exhibit the virtues in detail, it is even more important to trace back
the virtues to virtue itself. A man's duties are diverse, as diverse as
the various occasions and circumstances of life, and they can only come
into being with the various institutions of his time, Church and State,
home and country, commerce and culture. But the performance of these may
be slowly building up in him a consistent personality. It is in
character that the unity of the moral life is most clearly expressed.
There must be therefore a unity of character