Life and Conduct | Page 3

in an office may act dishonestly and go on perhaps for long doing so, and thinking he is carefully concealing his frauds, but, when least expected, discovery takes place, and ruin and disgrace follow. (2) Sorrow reveals character. Nothing more truly shows what a man is than his bearing under the sorrows of life. When the flag is wrapped around the flag-staff on a calm day, when no breath of wind is moving, we cannot read the device that is upon it, but when the storm unfurls the flag, we can read it plainly enough. In the same way when the troubles of life beat upon men we can read clearly what they are. Again, when we go along the road on a summer day we often cannot see the houses that are concealed by the foliage of the trees; but in winter-time, when the trees are bare and leafless, we know what kind of houses are there, whether they are squalid cottages or grand mansions. So in the winter-time of life, when the leaves are blown away, men come out and we know what kind of character they have been building up behind the screen of their life. (3) If time and sorrow do not reveal character, eternity will. We will appear then, not as we seem, but as we are. Christ is to be our judge. Consider what a striking thing it is in the life of Christ that His searching glance seemed to go right to the heart, to the hidden motive, to the man within. "He knew what was in man." A poor woman passed by Him as He sat in the temple. She was poverty-stricken in her garb, and she stole up to the contribution-box and dropped in her offering. Christ's glance went right beyond her outward appearance, and beyond her small and almost imperceptible offering, to the motive and character. "She hath given more than they all." All sorts of people were around Him: Pharisees, with their phylacteries; Scribes, with their sceptical notions; Samaritans, with their vaunted traditions: but He always went right beyond the outward show. The Samaritan was good and kind, though he got no credit for piety; the Pharisee was corrupt and self-seeking, though he got no credit for piety; the Publican was a child of God, though no one would speak to him. Christ reversed the judgment of men on those people whom they thought they knew so well, but did not know at all. So it shall be at the last; we shall be judged by what we are.
IV. Character alone endures.--What a man has he leaves behind him; what a man is he carries with him. It is related that when Alexander the Great was dying he commanded that his hands should be left outside his shroud, that all men might see that, though conqueror of the world he could take nothing away with him. Before Saladin the Great uttered his last sigh he called the herald who had carried his banner before him in all his battles, and commanded him to fasten to the top of the spear a shroud in which he was to be buried, and to proclaim, "This is all that remains to Saladin the Great of all his glory." So men have felt in all ages that death strips them, and that they take nothing with them of what they have gained. But what we are ourselves we take with us. All that time has made us, for good or evil, goes with us. We can lay up treasures in ourselves that neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and which thieves cannot steal away. "The splendid treasures of memory, the treasures of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and loving heart, all are treasures which a man can carry in him and with him into that other world."
We are but farmers of ourselves, yet may, If we can stock ourselves and thrive, uplay Much good treasure for the great rent-day.--DONNE.
"All the jewels and gold a man can collect he drops from his hand when he dies, but every good action he has done is rooted into his soul and can never leave him."--Buddhist saying.
V. The highest character a man can have is the Christian Character.--(1) Christ is the giver of a noble character. It is possible to be united to Christ as the branch is united to the tree; and when we are so, His life passes into ours: a change in character comes to us; we are renewed in the inward man, old things pass away, and all things become new. In the life of St. Paul we have a striking instance how coming to Christ effects a change in character. He became a different man from what he was;