Christian selfculture Author:Leonard Bacon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IH. INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS RELATED TO A RELIGIOUS LIFE. "Provide things honest in the sight of all men." Bom. xii. 17. "Whatsoever tilings... more » are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phil. iv. 8. CHAPTER III. INTEGRITY AND AMIABLENESS AS BELATED TO A RELIGIOUS LIFE. Religion without goodnesg. A truly Christian man is the better for his religion, — more worthy of lore and confidence in all the relations of society. The culture of the secular virtues is one part of the Christian self-culture. How these virtues are to be cultivated. Difference in this respect between the believer in Christ and the unbeliever. A RELiGicTcrs life is sometimes supposed, strangely enough, to be quite reconcilable with a most disagreeable deficiency of those social and secular virtues which may exist without the inspiration of Christian faith. Doubtless those men who think that mere good-nature, or tho graceful play and impulse of natural affections, or the merely secular morality which makes an agreeable neighbor and a wholesome member of society, is an all-sufficient substitute for religion — fall into a fatal error. But, on the other hand, those who make religion an all-sufficient substitute for the many estimable and amiable qualities of which an unregenerate man is capable, and who, therefore, undertake to be religious men without undertak- ingto be good men, are equally mistaken. There is no religious delusion more gross than that of men .who expect to be saved by a religiousness which cares nothing for the things which are " honest," — estimable, or becoming — " in the...« less