s of becoming
Christlike. We should have to speak of the gifts of a Divine Spirit, of
the dependence upon God for it, and the like; but for the present
purpose we may confine ourselves to Peter's own prescription, 'be
diligent,' and that will secure it. But then the word itself opens out
into further meanings than that. It not only implies diligence: there
may be diligence of a very mechanical and ineffective sort. The word
also includes in its meaning earnestness, and it very frequently
includes that which is the ordinary consequence of earnestness--viz.,
haste and economy of time.

So I venture, in closing, just to throw my remarks into three simple
exhortations. Be in earnest in cultivating a Christlike character.
Half-and-half Christians, like a great many of us, are of no use either
to God or to men or to themselves. Dawdling and languid, braced up and
informed by no earnestness of purpose, and never having had enthusiasm
enough to set themselves fairly alight, they do no good and they come to
nothing. 'I would thou wert cold or hot.' One thing sorely wanted in the
average Christianity of this day is that professing Christians should
give the motives which their faith supplies for earnest consecration due
weight and power. Nothing else will succeed. You will never grow like
Christ unless you are in earnest about it any more than you could pierce
a tunnel through the Alps with a straw. It needs an iron bar tipped with
diamond to do it. Unless your whole being is engaged in the task, and
you gather your whole self together into a point, and drive the point
with all your force, you will never get through the rock barrier that
rises between you and the fair lands beyond. Be in earnest, or give it
up altogether.

Then another thing I would venture to say is, Make it your _business_ to
cultivate a character like that of Jesus Christ. If you would go to the
work of growing a Christ-like spirit one-hundredth part as
systematically as you will go to your business to-morrow, and stick at
it, there would be a very different condition of things in most of our
hearts. No man becomes noble and good and like the dear Lord 'by a
jump,' without making a systematic and conscious effort towards it.

I would say, lastly, Make haste about cultivating a Christlike
character. The harvest is great, the toil is heavy, the sun is drawing
to the west, the evening shadows are very long with some of us, the
reckoning is at hand, and the Mas