St. Paul’s brief enumeration of faith, hope, and charity, forms the sum of what in other places he sets forth with a large detail of things required of us, all serving to the same end and intent: only, remember carefully what that end is,—it is not the same for which Christ wrought and suffered, and He only could sustain; yet is it the “reasonable service,” or “living sacrifice of the whole man,” which is required, in order not only to our own improvement, which could not thrive without it, but in order to a promised recompense, which, together with the freedom of the Gospel state, were procured for us at so rich a cost. The ransom paid, the heritage obtained, by one only righteous Mediator, how widely do they differ from the promised recompense for the faithful and sincere! and yet how consistent are these things in their whole effect! There is one judgment-seat for both, and one form of judicial sentence, though in different respects, is applied to both; but how different is the language in which the same Apostle speaks of each. There is no need to call in the suffrage of a fellow-witness to correct his view, for both he and his fellow-witness, when they speak of the same things, use the same language, and declare the same consistent judgment. And what, then, is our Lord’s compendious draft of things required of us in the days of our probation? it is “to love the Lord our God with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the mind, and with all the strength; and our neighbour as ourselves.” Will you strain a flight beyond this, and regard the care for yourselves as too low a pitch for your wishes to excel, or for the native worth of what is good? Do but consider that the welfare and the happiness of his reasonable creatures formed the first object and design of the Creator, and can never cease to be his purpose; consider, too, that any kind of moral goodness which should not be good for us, would want just so much of real goodness, and of its proper and essential excellency. It was one of the vilest errors of the heathen world, and one which prevailed much, as their earliest historian tells us, that there was envy towards man among the gods; and no wonder, if the rule of Providence could be placed in such hands as they feigned for its administration. Again, as the truth itself is always true, and virtue, which is its image, is no less uniform and constant, most groundless and injurious must be those restrictions which would shut out any one real virtue or its exercise from the Christian pattern; for in so doing we should detract just so much from its integrity. You may reverse the proposition if you think fit, and say, with truth, that every virtue puts on the Christian character, not from any date of their adoption, but as they are cherished and enhanced by new motives and inducements, and strengthened by the bond of unity and concord in the Christian household.