Young Christians are in danger of making religion consist too exclusively in emotion, which leads them to undervalue knowledge.  But while emotion is inseparable from spiritual religion, knowledge is no less essential to intelligent emotion.  Ignorance is not the mother of devotion; and though a person may be sincerely and truly pious, with only the knowledge of a few simple principles, yet, without a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of religious truth, the Christian character will be weak and unstable, easily led astray, and carried about by every wind of doctrine.  Knowledge is also essential to a high degree of usefulness.  It expands and invigorates the mind, and enables us, with divine aid, to devise and execute plans of usefulness, with prudence and energy.

But knowledge alone is not sufficient; nor even knowledge added to faith.  Temperance must be added, as a regulator, both of soul and body.  All our appetites and passions, desires and emotions, must be brought within the bounds of moderation.  And to temperance must be added patience, that we may be enabled to endure the trials of this life, and not to faint under the chastening hand of our heavenly Father.  As it is through much tribulation that we are to enter into the kingdom of heaven, we have need of patience, both for our own comfort, and for the honor of religion.  Indeed, no grace is more needful, in the ordinary affairs of life.  It is the little, every-day occurrences that try the Christian character:  and it is in regard to these that patience works experience.  Many of these things are more difficult to be borne than the greater trials of life, because the hand of God is less strikingly visible in them.  But patience enables us to endure those things which cross the temper, with a calm, unruffled spirit; to encounter contradictions, little vexations, and disappointments, without fretting, or repining; and saves us from sinking under severe and protracted afflictions.

To patience must be added godliness, “which is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”  To be godly, is to be, in a measure, like God.  It is to be “renewed in knowledge, after the image of him that created us,” and to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.  This is the fruit of that patience which works experience, and results in hope, which maketh not ashamed.

To godliness must be added brotherly kindness; which is but acting out the state of heart expressed by godliness, which indicates a partaking of divine benevolence.

Then comes the crowning grace of CHARITY, “which is the bond of perfectness,” comprehending the whole circle of the social virtues.