SMALL FAULTS AND VIRTUES.
By H. More
THE "fishers of men," as if exclusively bent on catching the greater sinners, often make the interstices of the moral not so wide, that it cannot retain those of more ordinary size, which everywhere abound. Their draught might be more abundant were not the meshes so large that the smaller sort, aided by their own lubricity, escape the toils and slip through. Happy to find themselves not bulky enough to be entangled, they plunge back again into their native element, enjoy their escape, and hope they may safely wait to grow bigger before they are in danger of being caught. It is of more importance than we are aware, or are willing to allow, that we take care diligently to practice the smaller virtues, avoid scrupulously the lesser sins, and bear patiently inferior trials; for the sin of habitually yielding, or the grace of habitually resisting, in comparatively small points, tends in no inconsiderable degree to produce that vigor, or that debility of mind, on which hangs victory or defeat. Conscience is moral sensation. It is the hasty perception of good and evil, the peremptory decision of the mind to adopt the one or avoid the other. Providence has furnished the body with senses, and the soul with conscience, as a tact by which to shrink from the approach of danger; as a prompt feeling to supply the deductions of reasoning; as a spontaneous impulse to precede a train of reflections for which the suddenness and surprise of the attack allow no time. An enlightening conscience if kept tenderly alive, by a continual attention to its admonitions, would especially preserve us from those smaller sins, and stimulate us to those lesser duties which we are falsely apt to think are too insignificant to be brought to the bar of religion, too trivial to be weighed by the standard of scripture. By cherishing this quick feeling of rectitude, light and sudden as the flash from heaven, and which is in fact the motion of the Spirit, we intuitively reject what is wrong before we have time to examine why it is wrong; and seize on what is right before we have time to examine why it is right. Should we not then be careful how we extinguish this sacred spark? Will anything be more likely to extinguish it than to neglect its hourly mementos to perform the smaller duties, and to avoid the lesser faults, which, as they in a good measure make up the sum of human life, will naturally fix and determine our character, that creature of habits? Will not our neglect or observance of it, incline or indispose us for those more important duties of which these smaller ones are connecting links? The vices derive their existence from wildness, confusion, disorganization. The discord of the passions is owing to their having different views, conflicting aims, and opposite ends. The rebellious vices have no common head; each is all to itself. They promote their own operation by disturbing those of others, but in disturbing they do not destroy them. Though they are all of one family, they live on no friendly terms. Prodigacy hates covetousness as much as if it194were a virtue. The life of every sin is a life of conflict, which occasions the torment, but not the death of its opposite. Like the fabled brood of the serpent, the passions spring up armed against each other, but they fail to complete the resemblance, for they do not effect their mutual destruction. But without union the christian graces could not be perfected, and the smaller virtues are the threads and filaments which gently, but firmly tie them together. There is an attractive power in goodness which draws each part to the other. This concord of the virtues is derived from their having one common center in which all meet. In vice there is a strong repulsion. Though bad men seek each other they do not love each other. Each seeks the other in order to promote his own purposes, while he hates him by whom his purposes are promoted. The lesser qualities of the human character are like the lower people in the country; they are numerically if not individually important. If well regulated, they become valuable from that very circumstance of numbers which, under a negligent administration, renders them formidable. The peace of the individual mind and of the nation, is materially affected by the discipline in which these inferior orders are maintained. Laxity and neglect in both cases are subversive of all good government. But if we may be allowed to glance from earth to heaven, perhaps the beauty of the lesser virtues may be still better illustrated by that long and luminous track made up of minute and almost imperceptible stars, which though separately too inconsiderable to attract attention, yet from their number and confluence, form that soft and shining stream of light everywhere discernible, and which always corresponds to the same fixed stars as the smaller virtues do to their concomitant great ones.—Without pursuing the metaphor to the classic fiction that the Galaxy was the road through which the ancient heroes went to heaven, may we not venture to say that Christians will make their way thither more pleasant by the consistent practice of the minuter virtues? Every Christian should consider religion as a fort which he is called to defend. The meanest soldier in the army if he add patriotism to valor, will fight as earnestly as if the glory of the contest depended on his single arm. But he brings his watchfulness as well as his courage into action. He strenuously defends every pass he is appointed to guard, without inquiring whether it be great or small. There is not any deficit in religion or morals so little as to be of no consequence. Worldly things may be little because their aim and end may be little. Things are great or small, not according to their ostensible importance, but according to the magnitude of their object and the importance of their consequences. The acquisition of even the smallest virtue being, as has been before observed, an actual conquest over the opposite vice, doubles our moral strength. The spiritual enemy has one subject less, and the conqueror one virtue more. By allowed negligence in small things, we are not aware how much we injure religion in the eye of the world. How can we expect people to believe that we are in earnest in great points, when they see that we cannot withstand a trivial temptation, against which resistance would have been comparatively easy? At a distance they hear with respect of our general characters. They become domesticated with us, and discover the same failings, littlenesses, and bad tempers, as they have been accustomed to meet with in the most ordinary persons. If Milton, in one of his letters to a learned foreigner who had visited him, could congratulate himself on the consciousness that in that visit he had been found equal to his reputation, and had supported in private conversation his high character as an author, shall not the Christian be equally anxious to support the credit of his holy profession, by not betraying in familiar life any temper inconsistent with religion. It is not difficult to attract respect on great occasions, where we are kept in order by knowing that the public eye is fixed upon us. It is easy to maintain a regard to our dignity in a "Symposiac of an academical dinner;" but to labor to maintain it in the recesses of domestic privacy requires more watchfulness, and is no less the duty than it will be the habitual practice, of the consistent Christian. In all that relates to God and to himself, the Christian knows of no small faults. He considers all allowed and willful sins, whatever be their magnitude, as an offence against his Maker. Nothing that offends him can be insignificant. Nothing that contributes to fasten on ourselves a wrong habit can be trifling. Faults which we are accustomed to consider as small, are repeated without compunction. The habit of committing them is confirmed by the repetition. Frequency renders us at first indifferent, then insensible. The hopelessness attending a long indulged custom generates carelessness, till for want of exercise the power of resistance is first weakened, then destroyed. But there is a still more serious point of view in which the subject may be considered. Do small faults, continually repeated, always retain their original diminutiveness? Is any axiom more established than that all evil is of a progressive nature? Is a bad temper which is never repressed no worse after years of indulgence than when we first gave the reins to it? Does that which we first allowed ourselves under the name of harmless levity on serious subjects never proceed to profaneness? Does what was once admired as proper spirit, never grow into pride, never swell into insolence? Does the habit of incorrect narrative or loose talking, or allowed hyperbole, never lead to falsehood, never settle in deceit? Before we positively determine that small faults are innocent, we must undertake to prove that they shall never outgrow their primitive dimensions; we must ascertain that the infant shall never become a giant. Procrastination is reckoned among the most venial of our faults, and sits so lightly on our minds that we scarcely apologize for it. But who can assure us, that had not the assistance we had resolved to give to our friend under distress, or the advice to another under temptation, to-day been delayed, and from mere sloth and indolence been put off till to-morrow, it might not have preserved the fortunes of the one, or saved the soul of the other? It is not enough that we perform duties, we must perform them at the right time. We must do the duty of every day in its own season. Every day has its own imperious duties; we must not depend upon to-day for fulfilling those which we neglected yesterday, for to-day might not have been granted us. To-morrow will be equally peremptory in its demands; and the succeeding day, if we live to see it, will be ready with its proper claims. Indecision, though it is not so often caused by reflection as by the want of it, yet may be as mischievous, for if we spend too much time in balancing probabilities the period for action is lost. While we are ruminating on difficulties which may never occur, reconciling differences which perhaps do not exist, and poising in opposite scales things of nearly the same weight, the opportunity is lost of producing that good, which a firm and manly decision would have effected. Idleness, though itself "the most unperforming of all the vices," is however the pass through which they all enter, the stage on which they all act. Though supremely passive itself, it lends a willing hand to all evil, practical as well as speculative. It is the abettor of every sin whoever commits it, the receiver of all booty whoever is the thief. If it does nothing itself, it connives at all the mischief that is done by others. Vanity is exceedingly misplaced when ranked, as she commonly is, in the catalogue of small faults. It is under her character of harmlessness that she does all her mischief. She is indeed often found in the society of great virtues. She does not follow in the train, but mixes herself with the company, and by mixing mars it. The use our spiritual enemy makes of her is a master stroke. When he cannot prevent us from doing right actions, he can accomplish his purpose almost as well "by making us vain of them." When he cannot deprive the public of our benevolence, he can defeat the effect to ourselves by poisoning the principle. When he cannot rob others of the good effect of the deed, he can gain his point by robbing the doer of his reward. Peevishness is another of the minor miseries. Human life, though sufficiently unhappy cannot contrive to furnish misfortunes so often as the passionate and the peevish can supply impatience. To commit our reason and temper to the mercy of every acquaintance, and of every servant, is not making the wisest use of them. If we recollect that violence and peevishness are the common resource of those whose knowledge is small, and whose arguments are weak, our very pride might lead us to subdue our passion, if we had not a better principle to resort to. Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation. But the blown bladder at its fullest distension is still empty. Sluggish characters, above all, have no right to be passionate. They should be contented with their own congenial faults. Dullness, however, has its impetuosities and its fluctuations as well as genius. It is on the coast of heavy Bœotia that the Euripus exhibits its unparalleled restlessness and agitation.—H. More.