lts
some types of excellence that the world pooh-poohs, and pulls down some
that the world hallelujahs and adulates; it strips the fine feathers of
approving words off some vices which masquerade as virtues. It casts
round the notion of duty, of morality, of virtue, a halo, and it touches
it with emotion. Christianity does with the dictates of the natural
conscience what we might figure as being the leading out of some captive
virgin in white, from the darkness into the sunshine, and the turning of
her face up to heaven, which illuminates it with a new splendour, and
invests her with a new attractiveness. But all that any man rightly
includes in his notion of the things that are 'of good report' is
included in this theological word, righteousness, which to some of you
seems so wrapped in mists, and so far away from daily life.

I freely confess that in very many instances the morality of the
moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I
have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better
tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the
minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste
of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better
tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the
carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge that Christian people have but
poorly represented to the world what Christ and Christ's apostles meant
by righteousness, I reiterate that the righteousness of the gospel is
the morality of the world _plus_ a great deal more.

That being understood, let me remind you of two or three ways in which
this great truth of the text is obscured to us, and in some respects
contradicted, in the practice of many professing Christians. First, let
me say my text insists upon this, that the conduct, not the creed, makes
the Christian. There is a continual tendency on our part, as there was
with these believers in Asia Minor long ago, to substitute the mere
acceptance, especially the orthodox acceptance, of certain great
fundamental Christian truths for Christianity. A man may believe
thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles without the smallest
intellectual drawback, and not be one whit nearer being a Christian than
if he did not believe one of them. For faith, which is the thing that
makes a man a Christian to begin with, is not assent, but trust. And
there is a whole gulf, wide enough to drown a w