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