XX

THE MINOR OFFENCE

Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.-James ii. 10.

N this, at first sight, somewhat mysterious sentence, there is a profound psychological and spirit

ual meaning. The truth it contains is one which on reflection every seriously-minded man will affirm. Briefly stated, it is this. Character is all of a piece, woven without seam throughout; goodness is one thing, with many manifestations, each one of which is consistent with all the rest. Every Christian virtue presumes the existence of every other in its possessor; or, rather, there is but one virtue, which shows itself in various lights, and exhibits itself in diverse attitudes. There is only one virtue, whether it show itself as love, generosity, truthfulness, firmness, uprightness, humility, or what not; and the absence of any one so-called Christian virtue means that the rest are vitiated-not merely that the whole character is incomplete, but every single virtue is incomplete by the absence of one.

People dearly love anomaly. They are not prepared to commit themselves to theories until they are sure they will work in practice; and, provided a faulty theory does work fairly well in practice, we are prepared to put up with it. These peculiarities of our

moral constitution sometimes expose us to criticism, partly or wholly deserved; for our national inconsistencies, to a certain extent, are the impressive expression of our individual inconsistencies too. A book has just been published by that acute observer of men and things, and eminent statesman, Mr. Bryce. He calls it "Studies in Contemporary Biography," and it contains sketches of eminent men and their characteristics as known at close quarters to Professor Bryce. In the sketch of Lord Beaconsfield occurs this paragraph:

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English society was then, and perhaps is still, more complex, more full of inconsistencies, of contrasts between theory and practice, between appearances and realities, than that of any other country. Nowhere so much limitation of view among the fashionable, so much pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity among the rich, mixed with so much real earnestness, benevolence, and good sense; nowhere, therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous to one who looked at it from without, wanting the sympathy which comes from the love of mankind, or even from the love of one's country."

That is a very acute and searching criticism. Nearly everybody would confess it to be true. Just as it is true in the large of English character as a whole, so I believe it is true in the minor world of individuals, and even of professedly Christian character. I would not exempt religious men from the sweeping statements here made. We are composed of contradictions, our religious life bristles with them, and we sometimes forget that Christianity is not a code nor a set or rules; it is a spirit and a life. When

a man has the right spirit, character can almost be left to take care of itself, and when he has not the right spirit, he may call himself religious, but you will find that his character is inharmonious, warring against itself, and while he forgets the perfect obedience to the Master in one point, he has omitted to see that he has vitiated character all through.

I am impressed by certain things which as a sympathetic observer I cannot but see and regret in my acquaintance with men. One of these is the vast amount of unnecessary unhappiness which exists amongst professedly Christian people and in professedly Christian homes. You would get excited in five minutes if instead of talking in this way to you someone were to begin to speak about the income-tax, or the education question, or temperance reform. I sometimes think we shout loudest about the things that matter least. If you will examine it you will find that your happiness does not depend primarily, no, not perhaps even secondarily, on the right solution of any or all of these questions of common and public interest, but rather upon the solution of the problems about little things that you are living in at home. The home is the place where we should in our common life approach nearest to God; not the church, not the business mart, with its discipline, its necessary school, its lessons that will have value in eternity, but in the home we meet with the affinities and the relationships which are in some sort types and symbols of eternal realities. In the home we come closest to each other, and are placed in each other's custody in such wise that surely it is God-given and God-meant for the higher training of the individual soul. If home be

right, men and brethren, you will be better citizens; if home be right, the Church will feel the influence of it; if home be right, our corporate life will not want for good men and true; and if home be wrong, there is something wrong with our religious character and our religious profession. I observe that it is in the minor things that most of the unhappiness is caused which is so common, and which I am perfectly sure exists in the experience of those who are listening to me now. There is, for example, the vice of a dual demeanour, from which so many of us suffer. The City men who listen to me take no end of trouble to be agreeable to those with whom they have to deal. You may say it is nothing more than would be expected from one man in a civilised country in his relations with another. Let us examine sympathetically your behaviour of a day. A perfect stranger whom you never saw before has been occupying your attention for an hour; you have been quoting prices to him, and trying to get him to buy from you this or that good thing of which you have to dispose. It is perfectly wonderful how winsome you have been and mean to be, and with hardly any trouble consciously taken. You exhibit yourself in a favourable light, you try to study your man, and I venture to suppose not altogether with the object of exploiting him. You are prepared to consider him in friendly fashion, and you have given far more of the power of your personality for that man's good opinion than possibly you are aware. If he goes away, having bidden you good-bye, he will carry kindly memories of you; you have made a certain impression upon him; if ever he thinks or speaks of you again he will estimate you

according to that impression. From his point of view, what he thinks of you is you. Now we will . go home with you. Somehow there is a different man here. You are perfectly unconscious of it, may be, but as you take off your hat when you enter the hall your whole demeanour undergoes a change. You forget the winsomeness that was necessary when you were quoting prices; there is a difference in your attitude; you don't take so much trouble now to be genial. If anyone were to ask you whether you had been lacking in tenderness, considerateness, sympathy, insight, at home, you would say, "No "—but you are. Thank God it is not universal, but it is sufficiently common for us to give each other pause, and ask whether any professedly Christian man ought ever to have a dual demeanour; the same demeanour which you have to the stranger ought to be the demeanour which you wear at home. If you have a better, if you have a higher altitude to take, take it with the nearest and the dearest, rather than with the man you casually meet upon the street. If you do not, you are losing something, and experience tells you that you have lost much, whether you ever think about it or not. It is trifles at home that make happiness or unhappiness. Great tragedies usually begin in little things. A husband and a wife are drifting apart; each of them knows it, neither blames himself or herself. It is little things that cause the breach; byand-bye the great scandal comes out, and the whole. community knows; but there may have been a lifetime of agony before that, which surely need never have been, if what we say and sing in the house of God represented the very truth about ourselves. Our first