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VI

THE GREATNESS OF TRUE CHARACTER

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. -Matt. 23: 23.

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RUE righteousness is essentially great. Everything about God is great: His judgments are a great deep; His mercy is like the wideness of the sea; His righteousness is as the great mountains; and all who are partakers of the divine nature will discover breadth and largeness in whatever they are and do. Our Lord felt that in this particular the Pharisees were painfully deficient; His great soul again and again was revolted by their paltriness.

The righteousness of God reveals itself in greatness of mind. The Old Testament has for its main theme the nature and obligation of righteousness, and the intellectual grandeur of the sacred book cannot be overlooked; it has necessarily to deal with the manifold details of human duty, but the general effect of its teaching is largeness, loftiness, sublimity: the lawgivers, prophets, and psalmists are never pedantic. How

lofty, spacious, and luminous is the mind of our Lord! On the intellectual side of His righteousness nothing is narrow or trivial. The love, power, and faithfulness of God; the broad and sublime aspects of the law; the dignity, the sinfulness, the sorrowfulness, the hope of human kind; heaven, revealed in a few grand touches; hell, disclosed in lightning flashes,-here was the substance of His thought and teaching. That He was not insensible to the mint, anise, and cummin of doctrine, to the jot and tittle of the law, is sufficiently clear; yet He never forgot the due balance and proportion of belief and duty, and the weightier matters of the law were invariably the burden of His mind and discourse. In all probability Shakespeare, Milton, or Newton would not have shone at afternoon tea and our Lord was intolerant of the cramped, chaffering Pharisee, who, analyzing the spark, forgot the sun; who, absorbed in the chemistry of the raindrop, lost sight of the sea; and whose metaphysical enthusiasm about the atom made him blind to the universe. Let us watch against this peril. Hair-splitting in doctrine and casuistical distinctions in conduct have something to say for themselves; but their tendency is to become disproportionate and misleading. "Let others wrangle, I will wonder," was the fine, profound saying of Augustine. Think noble thoughts of God, behold the wondrous things of the law,

take large views of the divine purpose and government, and it will not then be difficult to preserve the whole analogy of the faith.

The righteousness of God reveals itself in greatness of conscience. The Pharisee was emphatic on peppercorns, yet weak on the great principles of character and the primal duties of life.

He resembled those Indians who are said to treasure gold-dust, but when they find a nugget forthwith bury it in the earth. Here, again, our Lord was deeply offended. Not that He underestimated the significance of the minutiae of ethics; this was far from Him: whatever implied any moral quality was sacred to Him who knew life so intimately, and who therefore realized how much depends upon faithfulness in "that which is least." Caroline Fox wrote of her sister: "Anna Maria does habitually many fine, little things." Rare talent! splendid praise! Nothing is more entirely in consonance with the mind that was in Christ than this delicate sense which prompts instinctively the many little things which give to life satisfying sweetness and grace. There is, however, a morbid, niggling conscience which magnifies lighter things until it obscures the cardinal elements of character and the supreme responsibilities of life. The eye of a great commander is upon the most trifling provision which adds to the efficiency of his army, down to the buttons and shoelaces of his soldiers, but his

mind is intent all the time on those supreme movements which determine the issue of battle: the genuine merchant is alive to every small economy and discipline, yet he does not allow prudence to degenerate into the pettifogging and cheese-paring which frustrate fortune and the intelligent lover of God cherishes a noble conscience which, while true to every precept of the law, is unfailingly loyal to all the obligations of justice, truth, and purity. Let us cultivate our moral sense in the light of God, testing it by the eternal standard, and it shall be sane and safe, accurate and sustaining, exempt from fussy scruples, and altogether free from the uncertainty and suffering which afflict a distraught sense. Dot the i's and cross the t's; but let not the text of life's story be wanting in that thought and beauty which render it acceptable to God and delightful to man.

The righteousness of God reveals itself in greatness of heart. True righteousness is unselfish, tender, merciful: we often associate the idea of sternness with righteousness; but the righteousness of God means patience, gentleness, love. Such was the righteousness of our Lord and Saviour: it found expression in the utmost magnanimousness. The heart of a Pharisee was the most inconsiderable organ in his body, and the coldest; therefore our Lord visited him with severest condemnation. The pity, forbearance,

compassion, and self-sacrifice of a truly righteous man are wonderful. If we go no farther than strict legality, we end in injustice; but going on to sympathy, humanity, and sacrifice, we find how love is the fulfilling of the law. When a man's religion makes him egotistical, narrow, hard, and harsh, something is the matter with it. The fact is that right and love must go together. Love without right is a feeble sentiment, a wildrose frail and faint; right without love is a stinging briar united, they bear the flower of paradise guarded by the austere sanctions which only enhance its charm in the eyes of the pure in heart.

Work downward from great thoughts, noble conscientiousness, and a magnanimous heart, and we shall hardly be found wanting in the anise, mint, and cummin of life; just as our scientists who know most of the vast orbs and spaces and periods of the universe are most regardful of its minutest points: but if we habitually occupy our mind with small questions and things, character will be hopelessly dwarfed. Live in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and the spaciousness shall get into your soul.

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