§ 185. Illustrations of the inconsistent character. We shall perhaps obtain a more full and precise idea of consistency of character if we look at the person who is without it. The inconsistent man projects a plan of operations to-day; to-morrow he makes preparations to carry it into effect; and the next day he abandons it. He proclaims his friendship for this or that individual; eulogizes their merits, without much discrimination, on every opportunity, suitable or unsuitable; but suddenly he becomes suspicious, recalls his eulogiums, and ends in hatred. He adopts the principles of some literary, political, or religious sect, defends them with great zeal for a short time, and then rejects them with contempt. And it is impossible, from any assertions he may make or any course he may pursue at the present moment, to divine what doctrines he will maintain or what course he will take hereafter. In the language of Bruyère, "a man unequal in his temper is several men in one; he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners; he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now; he is his own successor; ask not of what complexion he is, but what are his complexions; nor of what humour, but how many sorts of humour has he. Are you not deceived? Is it Eutichrates whom you meet? How cold he is to-day! Yesterday he sought you, and caressed you, and made his friends jealous of you. Does he remember you? Tell him your name.

§ 186. Illustrations of the consistent character.

The consistent man is directly the reverse. He may be less prompt and rapid in his movements, but he ordinarily exhibits more discretion. And when he has once come to a conclusion as to what course is best to be pursued, he goes forward to the accomplishment of his object with perseverance and success. He may be somewhat cautious in forming friendships, but he is equally so in breaking them up and terminating them. He endeavours to perform what he II.-F F

considers to be his duty after a full examination of a subject, and is not discouraged, and angry, and turbulent if he happens to meet with disappointments. He looks calmly on the changes of life, neither much elated by prosperity, nor depressed by adversity. He does not make his principles bend to his circumstances, but conscientiously and firmly maintains them under all changes of fortune. If he is poor in outward wealth, he is rich in inward consolation; if he is sometimes filled with sorrow, he is not harassed with the tenfold wretchedness of remorse; and if he is destitute and unhonoured, he is never contemptible. -Such is the consistent man when guided by the sentiments of virtue. Such, among other illustrious names abounding both in profane and sacred history, was Socrates. It was his consistency of character which shed such a lustre over the name and life of that wisest of the sons of Athens.

Other men may have possessed equal talents and have been equally conspicuous; but they had not the same consistency; a consistency the more remarkable, as it was sustained not only against outward pressures, but against no small share of inward evils. It is this trait in particular which has rendered the ethical teacher of the ancients so pre-eminently entitled to the rank which he holds. In almost every possible situation that could test his principles or try his patience, he was unaltered. He retained the same high principles of virtue, the same meekness, and kindness, and cheerfulness, the same unfeigned disposition to promote the good of his country and of all mankind, amid great poverty, amid ingratitude, and rebuke, and calumny, in prison, and in death itself. Had he decidedly failed in a single position, had he subjected his principles to some temporary convenience even for one short hour, it would have tarnished forever the glory of his good name.

§ 187. Of individuals remarkable for consistency of character. And if we come down to our own times and our

,

own country, is it not the same? What is it that imparts its deathless splendour to the name of Washington? It is the same consistency of character. In that well-balanced and noble mind, each desire and passion was compelled to keep its place. He never allowed them to usurp an undue dominion, and to drag his Will hither and thither against the dictates of his Conscience. He had but one rule of conduct, that of an enlightened moral sense. Hence his life was not, at different periods, at variance with, and dissevered from, itself, but was one throughout, constituting from beginning to end (at least as compared with that of the great mass of mankind) a resplendent and unchangeable unity of excellence.

We have often thought that the life of Lafayette, the friend and associate of Washington, was an interesting illustration of this subject. Having seen in his youth the miseries of a government which is not based on just fundamental laws, he naturally felt a sympathy for those, wherever they might be, who were struggling for liberty. It was not, however, the licentiousness of a mob which had any charms for him; but freedom controlled by law, the union of liberty and order. The promotion of these was always the great object of his life, steadily and openly pursued in almost every possible variety of trying situation. At one time the idol of the populace, at another doomed by them to the scaffold; at one time the prominent and leading man of his nation, and soon after a detested fugitive and exile; to-day the admired inmate of palaces, to-morrow the resident of a dungeon; in poverty and in wealth, in joy and in sorrow, in honour and in degradation, under the old monarchy, the republic, the empire, and the constitutional monarchy, in the Old World and the New, in the field of battle and amid the debates of the senate, when everything around him had changed and everything in his own personal situation, he still steadily and cheerfully pursued the same noble object, uniting with delightful harmony the end with the beginning, and identified,

more than anything else, by THE UNCHANGEABLE IDEN

TITY OF HIS PRINCIPLES.

§ 188. Of the value of consistency in the religious character. If consistency gives nearly its whole beauty to the character of men in the political sphere and also in the ordinary transactions of life, it is certainly not less fitted to adorn and to honour in the discharge of the various duties of religion. Probably no directions in the Holy Scriptures (not always given in express terms, but often indirectly and by implication) are more frequent than those which require us to possess and exhibit consistency of religious character. This requisition is implied more or less in all those passages which exhort us to labour and not to faint, to bear with patience, not to be soon shaken in mind, and to persevere unto the end. When we lack wisdom, we are directed by an Apostle to "ask in faith, nothing wavering; for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." Again and again, Christians are commanded to watch, to stand fast, to continue grounded and settled in the faith, not to be moved away from the hope of the Gospel, and to hold fast their profession without wavering.

It is melancholy to see how much the conduct of those who would not be thought to be wanting in true Christian feeling varies with circumstances. The performance of the most plain and obvious duty (for instance, that of prayer) is unwisely and wickedly made to depend upon a thousand contingencies, as some transient doubt or fear, to which all men are subject, some trifling worldly disappointment, some slight affection of the nervous system, a keen and uncomfortable atmosphere, the wind blowing in a particular direction, a bright and beaming sun, or a sky overcast with clouds. Many religious persons decline doing what it is obviously their duty to do, because, as they

allege, they are not in the right frame; in other words, because their hearts are not sufficiently quickened and enlivened; not considering that the laws of God and the requisitions of duty are as much binding upon the will and the moral powers as upon the desires and affections. When the desires, including the affections, are asleep, or are tending the wrong way, we may still find within us abundant elements of action in the will and the conscience. And just so long as the faculty of the will remains to us, and, at the same time, the moral nature, by pointing out a certain course to be pursued, furnishes a basis or occasion for the will's action, no excuse of dulness and worldliness of the affections can possibly avail. Men may always be morally bound to do up to the limit of what they can do; and if their feelings (we speak not of the moral feelings, but merely of the desires and affections in themselves considered) do not come up to the standard of their actions, that may be their sin, as it undoubtedly is, but not their excuse. Not that we mean to approve, by any means, a cold and heartless performance of religious duties; but merely to assert; that there are elements in our nature which are sufficient to keep the conduct steady, and which ought to keep it steady, to the pursuit of the great objects of a religious life, amid the fluctuations of feeling to which men are so exposed. A depressed and suffering condition of the physical system may for a time infuse a gloom and darkness into our religious affections; but so long as our perceptions of truth remain clear, and our moral sensibilities are awake, and the faculty of the will is continued to us, we remain under an obligation, as binding and as urgent as ever, to hold on our way, to trust in God, to press forward towards the mark, to fulfil faithfully every obvious duty, "cast down but not destroyed, faint yet pursuing."

§ 189. Of the foundation or basis of consistency and inconsistency of character.

The statements of this chapter thus far go to show