The Elements of Character | Page 4

so
closely before his eyes that he can see nothing else, and cannot see that
correctly, while he insists that nothing else exists worthy of being seen.
There is ever an effort going on in the mind of man to find some
substitute for that universal obedience to the laws of faith and charity
which the Scriptures demand; and this temptation adapts itself specially
to every different class of believers. Thus the Jew, if the higher
requisitions of the Law oppress him, thinks to secure himself from its
penalties by the exactness of his ritual observances. The unfaithful
Romanist hopes to atone for a life of sin by devoting his property to the
Church, or to charity, when he dies. The Lutheran and the Calvinist,
when false to the call of duty, think to be forgiven their neglect of the
laws of charity by reason of the liveliness of their faith. So the modern
reformer sometimes seems to suppose himself at liberty to neglect the
cure of any of the vices that he loves, because he fancies that he may
take the kingdom of heaven by violence through his devotion to the
destruction of some special vice which he abhors. Thus temperance is
at times preached by men so intemperate in their zeal, that they are
unwilling to make public addresses on the Sabbath, because on that day

they are trammelled by the constraint of decency, which prevents them
from entering freely into the gross and disgusting details in which they
delight. We have the emancipation of negroes sometimes preached by
men fast bound in fetters of malignity and spiritual pride. We have the
destruction of the ruling influence of the clergy inculcated by men
dogmatic as Spanish Inquisitors. We are taught that the doctrine of the
inspiration of the Scriptures is a mere figment, by those who are firmly
convinced that their own inspiration is perfect and unfailing. The result
of all this is the development of characters as deformed as are the
bodies of victims to hydrocephalus or goitre; while, in painful contrast
to such victims, these morally distorted patients bear about their
deformities in the most conspicuous manner, as if they were rare
beauties. So pagan nations, when they embody their ideas of
superhuman attributes, often construct figures having several heads or
hands, or enormously enlarge some particular member of the frame,
fancying that they thus express ideas of wisdom or power more
perfectly than they could by forming a figure whose parts should all
present a symmetrical development.
It is not that reformers over-estimate the evil of any of the vices against
which they contend; for in the abstract that is impossible; but that they
under-estimate the evil of all other vices in relation to that one against
which they arm themselves. The tree of evil has many branches, and
the trimming away one of them may only make the rest grow more
vigorously. There can be no thorough progress in reform until the evil
of the whole tree is perceived and acknowledged, and the whole
strength is turned to digging it up by the roots.
If a man devote himself actively to the reform of some special vice,
while he at the same time shows himself indifferent to other vices in
himself or in his neighbors, it is evident that his virtue is only one of
seeming. We are told that he who is guilty of breaking one
commandment is guilty of all; because if we disregard any one
commandment of the Lord habitually, persisting in the preference of
our own will to his, it is evident we have no true reverence for him, or
that we act in conformity to his commandments in other points only
because in them our will happens not to run counter to his; and this is
no obedience at all.
If we find men leaving no stone unturned in promoting the cause of

temperance, who do not hesitate to cheat and slander their neighbors,
temperance is no virtue in them; but is the result of love of wealth, or of
property, or of reputation, or of the having no desire for strong drink;
because if a man abstain from intemperance from love to God, he will
abstain from cheating and slandering from love to the neighbor. "He
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen?"
So, too, slavery is an enormous evil, and it is very easy for one who
dwells in the free States to cover with opprobrium those who hold
slaves; but if the abolitionist indulges in a violence of invective that
compels one to fear that his heart is burning with hatred towards his
Southern brothers, he stands quite as low in the moral scale as a