consist in a single act, a single out-gushing of generous activity, but
in a series of generous actions, flowing from an established principle;
a principle pervading the whole soul, never wavering, never succumbing
to the biddings of selfishness. But the benevolent character thus
deeply laid is the _Christian character_. The scheme further requires
consistency of moral and religious conduct. While it no more demands
regular and persevering beneficent action than it demands other
Christian duties, it imperiously demands regular and persevering
beneficent action as an essential branch of Christian conduct,
inevitably resulting from those immutable principles which form the
basis of the Christ-like character. Thus the particular or individual
system grows, by a moral necessity, out of the general system of
thoughts, affections, and volitions, here unfolded; it being a moral
impossibility for one cordially to adopt the latter, in all its length
and breadth, without determining upon such a private system of
beneficence as his means, his relations to God and to the wants and woes
of our species, demand. To refuse this system of benevolent principles
and correspondent actions, therefore, is to refuse to be spiritually
minded; is to refuse to exhibit consistency of holy conduct; is to
refuse to exert all our powers and embrace all opportunities to do good;
in a word, it is to wear a blot on our Christian name which many waters
can never wash out.

Hence the beauty of the system,--general and particular--here presented,
is that, resting down on the eternal and changeless foundations of the
spiritual universe, and consequently harmonizing with the spirit of
Revelation and with the laws of mind, it rises up and expands into a
beautiful exhibition of the fruits of the Gospel, the legitimate product
of its holy precepts. It gives no encouragement to the idea that God's
favor may be secured, or duty done, by any mere external system of