Virtues And Vices Grow In Clusters
It is difficult to cultivate and maintain one virtue alone. The life of man is as a fruitful field. It will not be unproductive. If it is not sown with good seed and cultivated to bear good fruit, then evil seed will be sown by an enemy, and the life will be overrun by noxious weeds that will choke out the good plant.
Vice and virtue cannot flourish in the same heart. There is conflict and antagonism between the two. In some lives that vice rules a solitary virtue may by force of habit or early training maintain an existence, but it is not rooted in the heart, and is liable to be overturned by the first adverse wind or counter current.
Virtues grow in clusters. They help and strengthen one another, and help to choke out vices that would spring forth in the life. So vices, too, grow and flourish in thickets. They help and strengthen each other, and choke out every struggling virtue that would show itself in the life given over to sin. A stalk of corn cannot flourish and bear fruit in a thicket of briers or thorns. They will choke it out. So it will bear no fruit. To bear fruit, good seed must be sown in good soil, from which the briers, thistles, and thorns have been rooted out, and it must be cultivated. It must have the companionship of kindred plants that will give strength and help to fertilize it, that it may bear fruit abundantly. One virtue cannot stand alone in the heart and bear fruit in the life. Vices will thicken around it and choke it out, that it bear no fruit. Men striving to cultivate one virtue alone, and relying on it to bear fruit, will fail in the day of trial. It will not stand against the storm. It will not flourish when choked and crowded on every side by vices.
The word of God is the good seed to be sown in the heart. It is the only seed that can bear good fruit in the life. Faith in God through Christ is the plant that springs from that seed. It is the only plant that can bear the virtues that make life pure and holy here, and that can fit the soul for the holy companionship of "the just made perfect" at the right hand of God.
All true, abiding virtue comes from the word of God. It is the seed that envelops in embryo all the excellencies and helps to a holy life. Whatever is not found enveloped in the word of God, and does not grow out of it, has no place in the Christian's life. Whatever is found in the life that does not come from the word of God comes from an evil seed sown by the enemy, and will choke the word. It is a parasite that saps the true life of the tree and destroys its ability to bear good and perfect fruit. Parasites (vines that entwine themselves around a tree) often add to its apparent verdure and vigor, but they really sap the life from the tree, destroy its vigor to bear fruit, and shorten its life.
Faith in God is the tree that springs from the word of God planted in the heart. It bears all the Christian fruits. It excludes from the true life of the Child of God everything not embraced in and growing out of that word.
To snake that faith effective, the heart must have courage to be true to that faith, true to follow its leading, true to reject everything connected with that faith not growing out of the word of God. Nothing in the Christian life requires more true courage than is required to stand against the many innovations and devices of men that sweep over the land and seek to attach themselves to the Christian as a part of our help to the Christian work and life.
Not only is courage needed to maintain what God requires, and to oppose all that he has not required, but it requires knowledge of what God does require, and of what he has not required, that we rightly direct our courage. This requires earnest, prayerful study of the word of God to know what God requires, and prayer for strength to be true to what God requires. Oftentimes in association with the world, in seeing the waywardness of professed Christians, the readiness with which all seem to run in the way of popular error, we grow weary and discouraged, and feel like ceasing the conflict. It is only in prayer to God for wisdom to know the right, and for strength to stand for it, that we find courage to continue steadfast to the end of the course of fidelity to God.
The word of God in the heart produces faith. That faith may bear fruit in our lives for time and eternity, we must add virtue or courage, knowledge of the will of God, temperance or control of our appetites and passions, brotherly kindness, charity. These all grow out of faith, help to strengthen it, and to lead it into the ways of God, not away from them.
These constitute a rich cluster of virtues that grow out of the word of God, and that help and strengthen each other, that repress and destroy the vices that spring naturally from the flesh, and that fit and prepare the soul for a home with God.
Vices grow in clusters, too, and all departures from the word are vices. To set aside the word of God in one point opens the way for doing it in others.
The man who sets it aside in the work is ready to do it in the worship. And he who does it in the church service is ready to do it on the terms of admission into Christ. Those who have been educated to stick to the rule of entrance into Christ while forsaking God's order in other things may, through habit and prejudice, hold to the scriptures on entrance into Christ, but the principle of fidelity to God is surrendered and the floodgate for all error is raised. When the prejudice and force of habit is gone they can accept all error. Vice will not grow alone; there must be clusters. One brings with it a multitude more, just as one evil spirit carried to its home in the heart seven other more wicked than itself.
Under this principle immoralities follow in the wake of other departures from the word of God, and none are safe who consciously depart from the word of God in any point. "He who keeps the whole law, yet offends in one point, is guilty of all." Cut loose from the law of God, man has nothing to draw him to God or hold him from the rule of his own will and his own desires,
— Gospel Advocate, August 8, 1885