p. 610 | Character

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

Character.

THE following sentiment is from a sermon by Rev. Phillips Brooks, before the students of Harvard:—

Fill a man with every kind of knowledge; let him understand the sky, the earth, and the sea, and let him know all that history and that metaphysics can tell him—that does not make his character. Those things may all be in his mind as the apples may be in the basket. Not till a will, a choice, a distinct preference, for one thing over another, a distinct approval of this and a disapproval of that, comes—not until then has a man any true character, not until then do the knowledges become faculties, unite into a character having its virtue and its value in will.

The central event of human history, the life of Jesus Christ, was the great declaration that only by character does the truth turn itself into a power in life. Some day or other we will come to see that the same is true of the Christian church. The Christian church in its great idea is the exponent of character.

Let us have larger, truer, more unselfish men, and truth shall become more the food of the undeveloped appetite of hungry men. Clean your souls; get rid of jealousy and meanness. Be brave, be patient, be unselfish, be true, and learning shall certainly come through you to life. Is there a nobler motive? Is there an exhortation more worthy of his humanity, which a man can offer to his brother, more than that? And if all this be true, then is it not evident that no place where men are trained, no university, no college worthy of its name, is doing its duty unless it is not merely accumulating learning, but is also making character?