t come before the _Thou Shalt Nots_. The
superstructure of a personal religion cannot be reared on a foundation
of negatives. Life can only be constructed positively. The soul cannot
flourish on a principle of subtraction; it can only prosper on a
principle of addition. It is at this point that we perpetrate one of our
commonest blunders. Between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, we
invariably frame a variety of good resolutions; we register a number of
excellent resolves. But, for the most part, they come to nothing; and
they come to nothing because they are so largely negative. 'I will never
again do such-and-such a thing'; 'I will never again behave in
such-and-such a way'; and so on. We have failed to discover the truth
that gripped the soul of Ebenezer Erskine that day at Dryburgh. He saw,
as he repeated to himself his catechism, that the Ten Commandments
consist of three parts.

(1) _The Preface_--'_I am the Lord thy God!_'
(2) _The Precepts_--'_Thou shalt ..._'
(3) _The Prohibitions_--'_Thou shall not ..._'

Our New Year's resolutions assume that we should put third things first.
We are wrong. As Ebenezer Erskine saw, we must put the _Person_ before
the _Precepts_, and the _Precepts_ before the _Prohibitions_. The
_Center_ must come before the _Circumference_; the _Positive_ before the
_Negative_.

When, at the end of December, we pledge ourselves so desperately to do
certain things no more, we entirely forget that our worst offenses do
not consist in outraging the _Thou Shalt Nots_; our worst offenses
consist in violating the _Thou Shalts_. The revolt of the soul against
the divine _Prohibitions_ is as nothing compared with the revolt of the
soul against the divine _Precepts_; just as the revolt of the soul
against the divine _Precepts_ is as nothing compared with the revolt of
the soul against the _Divine Person_. It is by a flash of real spiritual
insight that, in the General Confession in the Church of England Prayer
Book, the clause, '_We have left undone those things which we ought to
have done_,' precedes the clause, '_And we have done those things which
we ought not to have done._' In his _Ecce Homo_, Sir John Seeley has
pointed out the radical difference between the villains of the parables
and the villains that figure in all other literature. In the typical
novel the villain is a man who does what he ought not to do; in the
tales that Jesus told the villain is a man who leaves undone what he
o