In Barnabas, his amiability and openness of nature, the very
characteristics that had made him strong, now make him weak and wrong.
How clearly then there is brought out here the danger that lurks even
in our good! I need not remind you how every virtue may be run to an
extreme and become a vice. Liberality is exaggerated into prodigality;
firmness, into obstinacy; mercy, into weakness; gravity, into severity;
tolerance, into feeble conviction; humility, into abjectness.
And these extremes are reached when these graces are developed at the
expense of the symmetry of the character.
We are not simple but complex, and what we need to aim at is a
character, not an excrescence. Some people's goodness is like a wart or
a wen. Their virtues are cases of what medical technicality calls
hypertrophy. But our goodness should be like harmonious Indian
patterns, where all colours blend in a balanced whole.
Such considerations enforce the necessity for rigid self-control. And
that in two directions.
(_a_) Beware of your excellences, your strong points.
(_b_) Cultivate sedulously the virtues to which you are not inclined.
The special form of error into which Barnabas fell is worth notice. It
was over-indulgence, tolerance of evil in a person; feebleness of
grasp, a deficiency of boldness in carrying out his witness to a
disputed truth. In this day liberality, catholicity, are pushed so far
that there is danger of our losing the firmness of our grasp of
principles, and indulgence for faults goes so far that we are apt to
lose the habit of unsparing, though unangry, condemnation of unworthy
characters. This generation is like Barnabas; very quick in sympathy,
generous in action, ready to recognise goodness where-ever it is
beheld. But Barnabas may be a beacon, warning us of the possible evils
that dog these excellences like their shadows.