Unconscious Exhibition of Character.
By Sunday School Times
How, ALL unconsciously, men disclose their own characters, and their own standard of conduct, when they give their reasons for their action in little matters of every-day life. And it is often the case that men prove their lack of a quality or a trait which they are making a special claim to the possession of, when they attempt an explanation of the reasons which have influenced them in the exhibit or the non-exhibit of that trait or quality. It is when they tell us why, in this instance, they were careful to be honest, or were willing to be less strict in their dealings with another, that they show us that with them honesty is a conventional term, of comparative and varying force, rather than a principle of unfailing obligation. So again, when they tell us under what circumstances they would count lying justifiable, and just what provocation would induce them to a course of vindictive retaliation, they prove their measure of fidelity to truth, and their degree of magnanimity and charity. Take a single illustration of this truth, out of a common experience in city life. You will hear a man say that formerly he was very quick to rise and proffer his seat to a woman who entered a crowded street-car in which he was sitting; but that, when he found that many a woman would take the proffered seat without giving him the slightest recognition of his courtesy, he made up his mind that there was no fair call on him to render a service that wasn't worth a, "Thank you, sir;" so "now when he has a seat he keeps it, whether others are standing or not." That statement marks that man's standard of gallantry. He was ready to make a show of ordinary politeness, so long as he was reasonably sure of being paid for it; but when he found that no special notice was taken of his acting like a gentleman, he gave up all thought of trying to make others think that he was a gentleman. Even now he is in the market; and if you will convince him that he can have fair wages for a show of gallantry, he will try his hand once more at acting as if he were a gentleman. If gallantry be a part of a man's nature, however; if a man be a gentleman in his very grain, and by his every instinct, he will show his gallantry and his gentlemanliness in spite of the failure of others to recognize his high standard, or to approach to it themselves. "If ye salute your brethren only," your peers in courtesy, says our Lord, "what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles [or the genteels, if you will have it so] the same?" He who is the true gentleman, is the gentleman always; whether he is to be the gainer, or the seeming loser, by the exhibit of his inborn grace of character.—Sunday School Times.