These standards might fitly be inscribed with the mottoes, 'Morality, Ordinances, Faith;' for from the one or the other of these titles come the different models for the religious character. Practical goodness, cheerful, kind and ready sympathy for the suffering, uprightness in dealing, blamelessness in example, these constitute the highest religious character for some. The observance of seasons or rites, the literal fulfilment of the terms of ordinances, is the great essential for the completeness of religious character to others. Then justification by faith, an embrace of doctrinal formularies, a fixed and constant and unresisting submission to a covenant which suspends mercy, is the standard for others. These are the prevailing standards of a religious character now. Of course, if they exist, they are in some quarters insisted upon, and the differences must constantly appear in the various estimates formed by religious persons. These diverse standards have likewise been chosen in the light of experience, of long experience, and in full view of all those ancient models which we have contemplated.
Now from this survey of the strange contrasts presented to us, as exhibiting the ideal of a religious character in different places and generations, and among us now, we might at first judge that there was in reality no true standard, but that it was all a matter of fancy, combined somewhat with the aspects and emergencies of society; that a religious character was no fixed, well-ascertained, and established existence. Yet, after all, this standard has been by no means so diverse as it would seem. For a deeper search proves to us, that the same qualities of heart have been seeking for expression by the most widely different manifestations. Change the skin and drop the body with its worn knees, its sordid or its golden robes, its rigid features, or its gay smiles, and the elements of Christian excellence, if they exist, will appear the same in all, divested of the local peculiarities of age and generation. Indeed, true Christian goodness, excellence of character, is like the water, the emblem of renewal and grace; water, as diffused over the earth, differing every where by elevation and clime. Here it is frozen into mountains of ice, there it issues as boiling vapor from the earth; it is scanty and brackish in the desert, profuse and clear in the green woods; here it is borne along in torrents; there it trickles in dancing rills; here it is buried in deep wells, there it oozes from full fountains; every where it is different, but every where it is water, and every where it is the element of life. Such is goodness, true excellence of character every where, apart from the peculiarities of age and clime.