forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often
misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a
perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and
much more besides. It alters the perspective, so to speak, of heathen
morals, and brings into prominence graces overlooked or despised by
them. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words
which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these
into itself. And instead of setting up a 'righteousness' which is
peculiar to itself, and has nothing to do with the world's morality,
Christianity says, as Christ has taught us, 'Except your righteousness
_exceed_ the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of God.' The same apostle who here declares that
actual righteousness and holiness are new things on the earth, allows
full force to whatsoever weight may be in the heathen notion of
'virtue,' and adopts the words and ideas which he found ready made to
his hands, in that notion--as fitly describing the Christian graces
which he enjoined. Grecian moralists supplied him with the names true,
honest, just, and pure. His 'righteousness' accepted these as included
within its scope. And we have to remember that we are not invested with
that new nature, unless we are living in the exercise of these common
and familiar graces which the consciences and hearts of all the world
recognise for 'lovely' and 'of good report,' hail as 'virtue,' and crown
with 'praise.'

So, then, let me pause here for a moment to urge you to take these
thoughts as a very sharp and salutary test. You call yourselves
Christian people. The purpose of your Christianity is your growth and
perfecting in simple purity, and devotion to, and dependence on, our
loving Father. Our religion is nothing unless it leads to these.
Otherwise it is like a plant that never seeds, but may bear some feeble
blossoms that drop shrunken to the ground before they mature. To very
many of us the old solemn remonstrance should come with awakening
force--'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?' You have apprehended
Christ as the revealer and bringer of the great mercy of God, and have
so been led in some measure to put your confidence in Him for your
salvation and deliverance. But have you apprehended Him as the mould
into which your life is to be poured, that life having been made fluent
and plastic by the