one by one."
The difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be
mechanical. One can always tell an engraving from a picture, an
artificial flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one
has somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one by one;
the temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character.
Some one defines a PRIG as "a creature that is over-fed for its
size." One sometimes finds Christians of this species--over-fed
on one side of their nature, but dismally thin and starved looking
on the other. The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and
adding it on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply grotesque. A
rabid temperance advocate, for the same reason, is often the poorest
of creatures, flourishing on a single virtue, and quite oblivious
that his Temperance is making a worse man of him and not a better.
These are examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with
mean companions. Character is a unity, and all the virtues must
advance together to make the perfect man.
This method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true direction.
It is only in the details of execution that it fails.
4. A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a variation
on those already named. It is
The very young man's method;
and the pure earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch
it. It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days
of the week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for
marks. this, with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in
a secret place, and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is
arraigned before it as before a private judgment bar.
This living by code was Franklin's method; and I suppose thousands
more could tell how they had hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in
locked-fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up
to shape their lives.
This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor.
You bear me witness that it fails. And it fails generally for very
matter-of-fact reasons--most likely because one day we forget the
rules.
All these methods that have been named--the self-sufficient method,
the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary
method--are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and
as they stand perfectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat,
that they must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they distract
attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result
at the expense of the perfect one. What that perfect method is we
shall now go on to ask.