CHARACTER;
VIRTUE

Because this is a moral universe, character, which is the excellence of moral beings, is naturally paramount. As the excellence of steel is strength and the excellence of art is beauty, so the excellence of mankind is moral character. “An honest man is the noblest work of God,” an apothegm usually attributed to John Wesley, may sound at first rather extreme, but if we allow the word “honest” to stand for all the moral virtues we may be able to understand the apothegm and possibly to agree with it. A saint should be not only a man of intense spiritual devotion but a man of symmetrical virtues and perfectly balanced character.

Philippians 4:8; Colossians 1:9–11; 2 Peter 1:5–7

The Set of the Sail, 122.