So pagan nations, when they embody their ideas of superhuman
attributes, often construct figures having several heads or hands, or
enormously enlarge some particular member of the frame, fancying that
they thus express ideas of wisdom or power more perfectly than they
could by forming a figure whose parts should all present a symmetrical
development.
It is not that reformers over-estimate the evil of any of the vices
against which they contend; for in the abstract that is impossible; but
that they under-estimate the evil of all other vices in relation to
that one against which they arm themselves. The tree of evil has many
branches, and the trimming away one of them may only make the rest grow
more vigorously. There can be no thorough progress in reform until the
evil of the whole tree is perceived and acknowledged, and the whole
strength is turned to digging it up by the roots.
If a man devote himself actively to the reform of some special vice,
while he at the same time shows himself indifferent to other vices in
himself or in his neighbors, it is evident that his virtue is only
one of seeming. We are told that he who is guilty of breaking one
commandment is guilty of all; because if we disregard any one
commandment of the Lord habitually, persisting in the preference of our
own will to his, it is evident we have no true reverence for him, or
that we act in conformity to his commandments in other points only
because in them our will happens not to run counter to his; and this is
no obedience at all.
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