3. Faith, hope, and charity are at once the root and fruit of all the virtues. They are the attributes of the man whom Christ has redeemed. The Christian has a threefold outlook. He looks upwards, outwards, and inwards. His horizon is bounded by neither space nor time. He embraces all men in his regard, because he believes that every man has infinite worth in God's eyes. The old barriers of country and caste, which separated men in the ancient world, are broken down by faith in God and hope for man which the love of Christ inspires. Faith, hope, and love have been called the theological virtues. But if they are to be called virtues at all, it must be in a sense very different from what the ancients understood by virtue. These apostolic graces are not elements of the natural man, but states which come into being through a changed moral character. They connect man with God, and with a new spiritual order in which his life has come to find its place and purpose. They were impossible for a Greek, and had no place in ancient Ethics. They are related to the new ideal which the Gospel has revealed, and obtain their value as elements of character from the fact that they have their object in the distinctive truth of Christianity--fellowship with God through Christ. These graces are not outward adornments or optional accomplishments. They are the essential conditions of the Christian man. They constitute his inmost and necessary character. They do not, however, supersede or render superfluous the other virtues. On the contrary they transmute and transfigure them, giving to them at once their coherence and value. [1] Phil. iv. 8; 1 Peter ii. 9. [2] 2 Peter i. 5. [3] Cf. Sir Alex. Grant, _Aristotle's Ethics_. [4] Cf. Wundt, _Ethik_, p. 147. [5] Green, _Proleg. to Ethics_, section 249. [6] _Idem_. [7] Matt. v. 1-16. [8] Gal. v. 22-3. [9] Col. iii. 12, 13. [10] Phil. iv. 8. [11] 1 Cor. xiii. [12] 2 Peter i. 5. [13] Strong, _Christian Ethics_. [14] Mathieson, _Landmarks of Christian Morality_. [15] _Summa_, I. ii. [16] An interesting parallel might be drawn between the Pauline conception of Love as the supreme passion of the soul and lord of the emotions, and the Platonic view of Justice as the intimate spirit of order alike in the individual and the state, expressing itself in, and harmoniously binding together, the virtues of Temperance, Courage, and Wisdom. {199} CHAPTER XII THE REALM OF DUTY We have now to see how the virtues issue in their corresponding duties and cover the whole field of life. Virtues and duties cannot be strictly distinguished. As Paulsen remarks, 'They are but different modes of presenting the same subject-matter.'[1] Virtues are permanent traits of character; duties are particular acts which seek to realise virtues.