Paul is saying nothing more than conscience, reason, the instincts of men everywhere endorse. His requirements in the rough division of virtues which he adopts, not for scientific accuracy but for practical force, are really said Amen!' to by every honest conscience. Soberly, righteously, godly '--that is what everybody, if he will be fair with himself, feels to be the sort of life he ought to live. Let me just touch upon these three things very briefly. They may be said, roughly, though not very accurately, perhaps, to cover the ground of a man's duties to himself, to his neighbours, and to God.
Soberly'--that is what you owe to your own nature. Righteously '--that is what you owe to people round you. Godly'--that is what you owe to Him. I need not explain, I suppose, that the word soberly' has by no means the narrow signification which the besetting vice of England has given to it now--viz., abstinence from, or a very restrained use of, intoxicating liquors, nor even the wider one of a curbing of the desires of sense. But the meaning may be better represented by self-control than by any other rendering. Now if there were no man in the world but myself, and if I had no thought or knowledge of God, and if there were no other standard to which I ought to conform, I should have, in my own nature, with its crowd of desires, tastes, inclinations, and faculties, plain indication that self-government was essential. For human nature is not constituted on the plan of a democracy or an ochlocracy--a mob rule--but there is a clear hierarchy and order of predominance in it; and, as plainly as a ship is made to need a rudder, so plainly on your make is there stamped the necessity for rigid self-control.
For we all carry with us desires, inclinations, appetites--some of them directly connected with our physical frame, and some of them a little more refined --which are mere blind inclinations to a given specific good, and will be stirred up, apart altogether from the question of whether it is expedient or right to gratify them. To a hungry man the odour of food is equally enticing, whether the food belongs to himself or his neighbour; and if he had to steal for it, it would still tempt him. Because, then, we are to a large extent made up of blind desires which take no account of anything except their appropriate food, the commandment comes from the deepest recesses of each nature, as well as from the great throne in the heavens -- Live soberly.' The engines will work on all the same, though the bows of the ship be turned to the rocks, and driving straight on the reef. It is the engineer's business to start them and keep them going; it is their business to turn the screw; it is somebody else's business to look after the navigation. We have our humours under lock and key' in order that we may control them. And if we do not, we shall go all to rack and ruin. So, live soberly,' says Paul.
The next requirement is, righteously.' Now, I said that that might, perhaps, be roughly explained as referring mainly to our duties to one another. But that is not by any means an exhaustive--and perhaps, a scarcely approximate--description. For the attitude expressed in righteously' does not so much point to other people as to the existence of a certain standard, external to ourselves, to which it is our business and wisdom to conform. I said that, if there were nothing in the world except a man and his own nature, the duty of sober self-government would necessarily arise. But the supposed isolation does not exist. We stand in certain relations to a whole universe of things and of people, and there does rise before every man, however it may be accounted for, or explained away, or tampered with, or neglected, a standard of right and wrong. And what Paul here means by live righteously' is,' Do as you know you ought to do,' and in shaping your character, have reference not merely to its constitution, but to its relations to all this universe of outside facts.
So far as the word may include our duty to others, I may just remind you that righteousness' in reference to our fellows demands mercy. The common antithesis which is drawn between a just man who will give everybody what they deserve, and not one scrap more nor less if he can help it, and a kindly man is erroneous, because every man has a claim upon every other man for lenient judgment and undeserved help. He may not deserve it, being such a man as he is; but he has a right to it, being a man at all. And no man is righteous who is not merciful. We do not fulfil the prophet's exhortation, do justice,' unless we fulfil his other, love mercy.' For mercy is the right of all men.
The last of the phases under which the perfect life is represented here takes us up at once into another region. If there were nobody but myself in the world, it must be my duty to live controlling myself; since I stand in relations manifold to creatures manifold and to the whole order of things, it is my duty to conform to the standard, and to do what is right. And just as plainly as the obligations to sobriety and righteousness press on every man, so plainly is godliness necessary to his perfection. For I am not only bound by ties which knit me to my fellows, or to this visible order, but the closest of all bonds, the most real of all relations, is that which binds us each to God.
And if man's chief end be to glorify God,' and then and thus, to enjoy Him for ever,' then that end, in its very nature, must be all pervasive, and diffuse its sweetness into the other two. For you cannot sliver up the unity of life into little sections and say, This deed has to be done soberly, and that one righteously, and this one godly,' but godliness must cover the whole life, and be the power of self-control and of righteousness. All in all or not at all.' Godliness must be uniform and universal. Lacking their supreme beauty are the lives of all who endeavour to keep these other two departments of duty and forget this third. There are many men--I have no doubt there are some of them among us--punctiliously trying to control their natures, and to live righteously; but all their thoughts run along the low levels, and they are absolutely blind and deaf to voices and sights from heaven. They are like some of those truncated pyramids, broad-based upon the solid earth, and springing with firm lines to a certain height, and then coming to a dead stop, and so being but stumps, which leave a sense of incompleteness, because all the firm lines have not gathered themselves up into the sky-piercing point which aspires still higher than it has reached. Soberly,' that is much; righteously,' that is more; godly,' that is, not most, but all.
