how there must be an all-round completeness in
order that we shall fairly set forth the glory and power of the light of
which our faith makes us children and partakers. The fruit 'is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth.' These three aspects--the good,
the right, the true--may not be a scientific, ethical classification,
but they give a sufficiently plain and practical distinction. Goodness,
in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues;
righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in
which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the
conditions of man's life and entire sincerity--these three do cover,
with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human
excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by that little
word _all_.

We all tend to cultivate those virtues which are in accordance with our
natural dispositions, or are made most easy to us by our circumstances.
And there is nothing in which we more need to seek comprehensiveness
than in the effort to educate ourselves into, and to educe from
ourselves, kinds of goodness and forms of excellence which are not
naturally in accordance with our dispositions, or facilitated by our
circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided;
the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward
side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over
northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to
content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or
that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us
to be all-round men, and would that we should seek to aim after and
possess the kinds of excellence that are least cognate to our
characters. Are you strong, and do you pride yourself upon your
firmness? Cultivate gentleness. Are you amiable, and pride yourself,
perhaps, upon your sympathetic tenderness? Try to get a little iron and
quinine into your constitution. Seek to be the man that you are least
likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of '_all_
righteousness and goodness and truth.'

Further, remember that this all-round completeness is not attained as
the result of an effortless growth. True, these things are the fruits of
the light, but also true, they are the prizes of struggle and the
trophies of warfare. No man will ever attain to the comprehensive moral
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