Character-Forming

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 28, 1913

Character-Forming

Acts spring from thoughts, acts repeated make habits; and habits form character. It will be seen, therefore, that one act does not form a character, unless, indeed, which is rarely the case, that act involves enough of the powers and will of the individual so as to give him a permanent stamp or mold. “Character” means, literally, a mark or figure clearly defined or cut. So people who are yielding, vacillating, easily turned this way or that by various influences, are said to be of no character.

Character-forming is like shaping the rough marble into the graceful monument or the beautiful statue. The statue is there already in the sculptor’s mind. His ideal is clean-cut and beautiful. But shaping the stone to that ideal, requires constant, well-directed labor. The chisel makes but little impression with one blow from the mallet. Two makes a little more; but again and again and again is the blow repeated, till the necessary material is removed, and the perfect shape appears, to be planed and polished by careful, patient toil.

So it is in the Christian life. God’s truth has cut us out rough stones from the great quarry of the world. He accepts us in the Beloved, as fitted for certain places in that great heavenly temple, on the conditions that we can stand the character-forming. One temptation resisted does not form the habit of resisting that temptation, unless it is specially aggravated; two do not form the habit; but as we withstand again and again, the victory is won, the character is formed, and the temptation is no longer a temptation. So the covetous man, by constantly exercising liberality through the grace of Christ, forever overcomes his covetousness, and forms a liberal character. It is just as true in every other direction. The great builder is our Lord Jesus Christ (Zech. 6: 12, 13); the agents are His Word and Spirit. Therefore we “commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”