Life and Conduct | Page 2

what we shall be in our future earthly life, what we shall be when that life is ended. No one becomes what he is at once, whether what he is be good or bad. You may have seen in the winter-time an icicle forming under the eaves of a house. It grows, one drop at a time, until it is more than a foot long. If the water is clear, the icicle remains clear and sparkles in the sun; but if the water is muddy, the icicle looks dirty and its beauty is spoiled. So our characters are formed; one little thought or feeling at a time adds its influence. If these thoughts and feelings are pure and right, the character will be lovely and will sparkle with light; but if they are impure and evil, the character will be wretched and deformed.
Fairy tales tell us of palaces built up in a night by unseen hands, but those tales are not half so wonderful as what is going on in each of us. Day and night, summer and winter, a building is going up within us, behind the outer screen of our lives. The storeys of it are being silently fashioned: virtue is being added to faith, and to virtue is being added knowledge, and to knowledge is being added brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity; or meanness is being added to selfishness, and greed to meanness, and impurity, malice and hatred become courses in the building. A wretched hovel, a poor, mean, squalid structure, is rising within us; and when the screen of our outward life is taken from us, this is what we shall be.
II. Character is independent of reputation and circumstances.--A man may be held in very high esteem by the world, and yet may be a very miserable creature so far as his character is concerned. The rich man of the parable was well off and probably much thought of, but God called him a fool. Here is a man who is greatly esteemed by the public; he is regarded in every way as admirable. Follow him home, and you find him in his family a mean and sordid soul. There you have the real man. We cannot always judge a man by what he has, or by what he appears to us; for what he is may be something very different. "These uniforms," said the Duke of Wellington, "are great illusions. Strip them off, and many a pretty fellow would be a coward; when in them he passes muster with the rest." We must not confound the uniform with the man: we are often too ready to do so. To a certain extent we can form an idea what a man is from the outside. The horny hand tells of the life of labor; the deep-set brow tells of the thinker. In other words we have a right to judge a man by his habitation. If the fences are broken down, the paths are unkept, the flower-beds full of weeds, we may be pretty sure the inhabitants are idle, thriftless, perhaps intemperate. So a clear eye, a firm step, an open countenance, tell of a pure, good soul within. For example, a man of cold exterior or of formal manner may often have a warm heart under it all; a man of rough manners may have kindly feelings that he cannot express. We are often long in the company of men before we really know them, and then the discovery of what they are comes on us by surprise.
III. Character cannot be always hidden.--There are those who seem to think that they can have one set of principles for themselves and another for the outward world; that they can be in their heart one thing and in society another; that they can have one character and another reputation. They may be proud, but they can so hide their pride as to have the reputation of being humble; they can lie, but still have the reputation of always speaking the truth; they can be impure, and yet have the reputation of being virtuous. But sooner or later what they really are generally becomes manifest. Reputation and character come to be one. That which they would keep secret cannot be concealed. The mask which men would wear slips aside and discloses the face beneath it. (1) Time reveals character. As the years pass along, a man generally gets to be known for what he is. For example, if a man is a coward and enlists in the army, he may swagger about and look like a real soldier, but a time will come when the spirit of the man will show itself, and he will be set down at his real value. Or a young man