Character and Conduct Part 22

Character--Child-like-ness

MAY 16

"Jesus afterwards focussed the new type of character in a lovely ill.u.s.tration which is not always appreciated at its full value, because we deny it perspective. Every reader of the Gospels has marked the sympathy of Jesus with children. How He watched their games! How angry He was with His disciples for belittling them! How He used to warn men, whatever they did, never to hurt a little child! How grateful were children's praises when all others had turned against Him! One is apt to admire the beautiful sentiment, and to forget that children were more to Jesus than helpless gentle creatures to be loved and protected. They were His chief parable of the Kingdom of Heaven. As a type of character the Kingdom was like unto a little child, and the greatest in the Kingdom would be the most child-like. According to Jesus, a well-conditioned child ill.u.s.trates better than anything else on earth the distinctive features of Christian character. Because he does not a.s.sert nor aggrandise himself. Because he has no memory for injuries, and no room in his heart for a grudge. Because he has no previous opinions, and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance. Because he can imagine, and has the key of another world, entering in through the ivory gate and living amid the things unseen and eternal. The new society of Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he who entered it must lay aside the world standards and ideals of character, and become as a little child."

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Character--Negative Virtues

MAY 17

"Some people seem to be here in the world just on their guard all the while, always so afraid of doing wrong that they never do anything really right. They do not add to the world's moral force; as the man, who, by constant watchfulness over his own health, just keeps himself from dying, contributes nothing to the world's vitality. All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists. The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful and hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence."

O. W. HOLMES.

"The seductions of life are strong in every age and station; we make idols of our affections, idols of our customary virtues; we are content to avoid the inconvenient wrong, and to forego the inconvenient right with almost equal self-approval, until at last we make a home for our conscience among the negative virtues and the cowardly vices."

_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.

Character

MAY 18

"The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we realise that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement which betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation.

Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule, steps down first."

_Diana Tempest_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.

"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards--they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow and wax strong, or we grow and wax weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Character--"Our Echoes roll from Soul to Soul"

MAY 19

"One of the main seats of our weakness lies in this very notion, that what we do at the moment cannot matter much; for that we shall be able to alter and mend and patch it just as we like by-and-by."

HARE.

"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow."

BEECHER.

"Let every soul Heed what it doth to-day, because to-morrow The same thing it shall find gone forward there To meet and make and judge it."

_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.

"Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever."

TENNYSON.

Habit

MAY 20

"Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As the snow gathers together, so are our habits formed: no single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change; no single flake creates, however it may exhibit, a man's character; but as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain, and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so pa.s.sion, acting upon the elements of mischief, which pernicious habits have brought together by imperceptible acc.u.mulation, may overwhelm the edifice of truth and virtue."

JEREMY BENTHAM.

"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, become flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the t.i.tle of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits."

_Amiel's Journal._

Habit

MAY 21

"The h.e.l.l to be endured hereafter which theology tells, is no worse than the h.e.l.l we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fas.h.i.+oning our characters the wrong way. Could the young realise how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar."

_Psychology_, Professor WILLIAM JAMES.

"Routine is a terrible master, but she is a servant whom we can hardly do without. Routine as a law is deadly. Routine as a resource in the temporary exhaustion of impulse and suggestion is often our salvation."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"It is just as easy to form a good habit as it is a bad one. And it is just as hard to break a good habit as a bad one. So get the good ones and keep them."

MCKINLEY.

Sin has its Pedigree