LORD, Help Us To "Hate Everything That Is Evil, And Hold Tight To Everything That Is Good."

Smaller virtues and lesser vices

(Hannah More, "Practical Piety") 

"Hate everything that is evil, and 
hold tight to everything that is good." 
Romans 12:9

It is important for the Christian . . .
  to practice the smaller virtues,
  to avoid scrupulously the lesser vices,
  and to bear patiently with minor trials. 

Smaller virtues and lesser vices 
make up a large part of human life, and 
fix and determine our moral character.

The smaller virtues are the threads 
and filaments which gently but firmly 
tie the Christian graces together. 
The acquisition of even the smallest 
virtue, is actually a conquest over 
the opposite vice, and doubles our 
moral strength.

Faults which we are accustomed 
to consider as small, are apt to be 
repeated without reservation. 
The habit of committing them is 
strengthened by the repetition. 

Frequency renders us at first 
indifferent, and then insensible.

The hopelessness attending a 
long-indulged habit generates 
carelessness, until the power 
of resistance is first weakened, 
then destroyed.

The Christian knows of no small faults. 
He considers sins, whatever their magnitude, 
as an offense against his Maker. Nothing 
that offends GOD can be insignificant.

Nothing can be trifling that makes 
a bad habit fasten itself to us!

Do small faults, continually repeated, 
always retain their original weakness?

Is a bad temper which is never repressed, 
not worse after years of indulgence, than 
when we first gave the reins to it?

Does the habit of exaggeration never lead 
to falsehood, or never move into deceit?

Before we determine that our small 
faults are innocent, we must try 
to prove that they shall never 
outgrow their initial dimensions. 

We must make certain that the infant 
shall never become a giant!

"Hate everything that is evil, and 
hold tight to everything that is good." 
Romans 12:9

Sow a thought--and you will reap an act;
sow an act--and you will reap a habit;
sow a habit--and you will reap a character;
sow character--and you will reap a destiny!

   ~  ~  ~  ~

GraceGems has published J.R. Miller's helpful two page short article, 
"Loyalty to Christ".