Character Building by F. B. Meyer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 18, 1913

Character Building

By F. B. Meyer

We are sent into this world to build up characters that will be blessed and useful in that great future for which we are being trained. There is a niche which only we can fill, a crown which only we can wear, music which only we can waken, service which only we can render. God knows what these are, and he is giving us opportunities to prepare for them. Life is our schoolhouse. Its rooms may be bare, but they are littered with opportunities of becoming fit for our great inheritance.

Knitting-needles are cheap and common enough, but on them may be wrought the fairest designs in the richest wools. So the incidents of daily life may be commonplace in the extreme, but on them, as the material foundation, we may build the unseen but everlasting fabric of a noble and beautiful character. It does not so much matter what we do, but the way in which we do it matters greatly. What we do may or may not live; but the way in which we perform our common tasks becomes an indestructible part of our character, for better or worse, and forever.

We ought, therefore, to be very careful how we fulfil these common tasks of daily life. We are making the character in which we have to spend eternity. We are either building into ourselves wood, hay, and stubble, which will have to be burned out at great cost, or the gold, silver, and precious stones that will be things of beauty and joy forever.—F. B. Meyer.