erimenter says: "But that is not my method. I have seen
the folly of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I work on a principle.
My plan is not to waste power on random effort, but to concentrate on
a single sin. By taking

ONE AT A TIME

and crucifying it steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all."

To this, unfortunately, there are four objections: For one thing, life
is too short; the name of sin is legion. For another thing, to deal
with individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature for the time
untouched. In the third place, a single combat with a special sin does
not affect the root and spring of the disease. If you dam up a stream
at one place, it will simply overflow higher up. If only one of the
channels of sin be obstructed, experience points to an almost certain
overflow through some other part of the nature. Partial conversion is
almost always accompanied by such moral leakage, for the pent-up
energies accumulate to the bursting point, and the last state of that
soul may be worse than the first. In the last place, religion does not
consist in negatives, in stopping this sin and stopping that. The
perfect character can never be produced with a pruning knife.

3. But a third protests: "So be it. I make no attempt to stop sins one
by one. My method is just the opposite.

I COPY THE VIRTUES

one by one."

The difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be
mechanical. One can always tell an engraving from a picture, an
artificial flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one has
somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one by one; the
temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character. Some
one defines a _prig_ as "a creature that is over-fed for its size."
One sometimes finds Christians of this species--over-fed on one side
of their nature, but dismally thin and starved looking on the other.
The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and adding it on to an
otherwise worldly life, is simply grotesque. A rabid temperance
advocate, for the same reason, is often the poorest of creatures,
flourishing on a single virtue, and quite oblivious that his
Temperance is making a worse man of him and not a better. These are
examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with mean companions.
Character is a unity, and all the virtues must advance together to
make the perfect man.

This method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true directi