Decision of Character

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1864

Decision of Character.

Without it, no man or woman is ever worth a button, nor ever can be. Without it, a man becomes at once a good-natured nobody, the poverty-stricken possessor of but one solitary principle, that of obliging everybody under the sun merely for the asking. He is like the judge who uniformly decided according to the views of the closing speech. Having no mind of his own, a man is a mere cipher in society, without weight of character, and utterly destitute of influence. Such a one can never command the respect, or even the esteem of men around him. All that he can command is a kind of patronizing pity. The man to be admired, respected, feared, and who will carry multitudes with him whether right or wrong, is he who plants his foot upon a spot, and it remains there in spite of storm, or tempest, or tornado; the very rage of an infuriated mob but gives new inspiration to his

stability of purpose, and makes him see that he is so much the more a man.