The Elements of Character by Mary G. Chandler

M >> Mary G. Chandler >> The Elements of Character

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

In cultivating the Imagination, we must be sure to allow Thought to go
with it hand in hand; remembering that the two together make up the
Understanding. We must be careful to search conscientiously for true
thoughts before allowing Imagination to shape them into forms. In order
to find the truth, we must love it for its own sake, and must seek it
with straightforward earnestness, because we believe it needful to the
building up of Character. If we seek it from any less worthy motive, our
sight will become morbid, we shall lose the power of knowing it when
it is found, and shall be liable to mistake for it some miserable
falsehood. If we allow Imagination too much liberty, zeal will run
before knowledge; if we allow it too little, knowledge will run before
zeal. In the former, case we shall be liable to fanaticism; in the
latter, to sluggishness. In the former case we shall be ready to
undertake to do anything that attracts us, whether we know how to do
it or not; in the latter, we shall not be willing to try to do what we
might. The lack of Affection prevents us from desiring to do a thing,
the lack of Imagination makes us think we cannot do a thing, the lack of
Thought of course makes it impossible to do a thing; for we cannot do a
thing till we know that it is to be done.

In our religion, Thought gives us faith, Imagination gives us hope, and
Affection gives us charity. Religion does not become a personal matter
to us until it takes the form of hope. While it is simply a thing of
thought it is cold, barren faith, and we care nothing for it; but when
Imagination touches it, faith is changed to hope, and we begin to
perceive that religion is a thing to be desired in our own persons.
Religious fear, too, is the child of Imagination. Devils believe and
tremble, because they hate goodness. Angels believe and hope, because
they love it.

Every one has within his mind an imaginary heaven, within and around
which all cherished images arrange themselves, according as they are
more or less dear. We should search our minds, and learn what are the
attributes of our heaven, if we would know whether we are tending
towards the true heaven that is prepared for those who order their lives
aright. We shall, if we do this, be sure to find that there are certain
images rising very often in our minds, into which our thoughts seem to
crystallize when disturbed by no interruption from without; and these.
images make up all that we believe of heaven; they are the kingdom of
heaven within us. We may, with our lips, acknowledge faith in a pure
heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness; but unless our ideas fall
habitually into forms of purity, there is no genuine faith in such a
heavenly kingdom. We truly believe only in what we love. We may learn
from books and from instructors a great deal about the science of
goodness, and may talk of such knowledge until we fancy that we should
be happy in a heaven where goodness reigned triumphant; and yet we may
be entirely deceived in this fancy, and our hearts may all the while be
fixed on things so entirely apart from the true heaven, that nothing
could make us more miserable than the being forced to dwell within its
gates. If we would test the quality of our faith, we must watch the
images and pictures that rise habitually before our mind's eye in our
hours of reverie; for they faithfully represent the secret affections of
the heart. If these images are forms of purity and goodness, it is well
with us; the kingdom of heaven is truly there; but if they represent
only forms of things that belong to this world, if dress and equipage
and social distinction haunt our longings, if visions of pride,
vain-glory, and luxury are ever prompt to rise,--visions that belong
only to the love of self and of the world,--visions that do not beckon
us onward to the performance of duty, but only entice us with the
allurements of sensuality and self-indulgence; or still worse, if
discontent, envy, and malice darken the temple of Imagination with their
scowls, the kingdom of heaven is far from us as the antipodes. This
imaginary heaven that selfishness and worldliness have built up within
us is in truth but an emanation from hell. We may talk of heaven, and
observe its outward forms all our lives while harboring this demoniacal
crew within; and we shall grow ever harder and colder with intolerance
and bigotry under their influence; nor can we ever have that joy in
heavenly hope that belongs to those whose hearts cleave to all that is
pure and true, and whose souls are therefore filled with the imagery of
virtue.

We cannot expect, in this life, to attain to a state of regeneration so
entire that no images of evil shall ever come to our souls; but we may
hope to become so far advanced that we shall not welcome and entertain
them when they come; but shall recognize them at once as often as they
appear, and drive them from us. This much, however, we cannot do with
our own strength, for that is weakness; but if we strive, looking ever
to the Lord, whose strength is freely given to all who devoutly ask his
aid, we shall be armed as with the flaming sword of cherubim, turning
every way to guard the tree of life.

AFFECTION.

Love is the Life of Man.--SWEDENBORG.

With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.--ST. PAUL.

The Affections are the most interior of all the attributes of man,--they
are in fact his spiritual life. The acquisitions of the Understanding
truly appertain to man only when the Affections have set their seal upon
them. We may store our memories with knowledge and wisdom gathered from
every source, but until they are grasped by the Affections they do
not belong to us; for till then they do not become part and parcel of
ourselves. So long as we merely know a thing we make no use of it. The
facts of knowledge, as they lie in the Understanding, may exhibit a rank
growth of thoughts and images; but though flowers may adorn them, they
will all perish barrenly; while, if the warmth of the Affections is
thrown upon them, the rich clusters of fruit speedily appear; not
only affording present delight, but promising to be the parents of
numerous offspring yet to come.

The Affections cannot be analyzed and comprehended with the same kind of
distinctness with which we comprehend Thought and Imagination; because
that which belongs to the Understanding can be expressed or described
in words, and in that form be passed from one to another; while the
Affections exist only in forms of emotion that cannot be distinctly
translated into words. A glance of the eye or a touch of the hand often
transfers an emotion from one mind to another with a facility and
clearness of which words are incapable. There are no things we believe
so completely as those which we _feel_ to be true, yet there are none
about which we reason so imperfectly.

The motive-power in man is Affection. What he loves he wills, and what
he wills he performs. Our Character is the complex of all that we love.
We often think we love traits of Character that we cannot possess; but
we deceive ourselves. All that we truly love we strive to attain,
and all that we strive after rightly we do attain. The cause of
self-deception on this point is, that we think we love a certain trait
of Character when we only love its reward; or that we hate other traits
when we only hate their punishment.

The passionate man perceives that his ungoverned temper causes him
trouble, and occasions him to commit acts of injustice, and to say
things for which he is afterwards ashamed; and he exclaims, "I wish I
could acquire self-control; but alas! a hasty temper is natural to me,
and I cannot overcome it." Tell such a man that he is just what he loves
to be, and he will deny it without hesitation; and yet the love of
combating and of overcoming by force are the darling loves of his heart;
and when he fancies that he is wishing to overcome these propensities,
he is thinking only of the worldly injury his temper may occasion him,
and not of the hatefulness of anger in itself. So soon as we begin to
hate anger for its own sake we begin to put it away; but while we only
hate the bad consequences of anger we cleave to its indulgence. So it is
with indolence. We know, perhaps, that we are indolent, and we perceive
that this vice stands in the way of our attaining to many things that
we desire, and we believe that we wish to become diligent, when we are
steadfastly loving a life of indolence, and wishing not for diligence,
but for its rewards. What we suppose to be dislike of indolence is only
dislike of the consequences that indolence brings in its train. So the
drunkard sometimes goes to his grave cheating himself with the idea that
the lust of the flesh binds and enslaves him; and that he really loves
the virtue of temperance, while in truth he is loving sensual indulgence
with all his heart. Possibly temperance reformers might be more
successful in reclaiming such slaves from their sin if they would talk
less of the punishments the drunkard brings upon himself in the shape
of poverty, and disease, and shame, and enlarge more upon the moral
degradation to his own soul which he fastens upon himself both for this
life and the life to come.

We are all of us perpetually liable to gross self-deception by thus
transferring in fancy our love or our hate for the consequences of vices
or virtues to the vices or virtues themselves. If we made this transfer
in fact, we should at once set about gaining the one and putting away
the other; but so long as we believe that sin dwells within us without
our consent and approval we become daily more and more the servants of
sin.

We not unfrequently see a very poor family having an intense desire for
education, and their poverty, instead of putting its acquisition out of
their reach, seems only to stimulate their ardor of pursuit. One half of
their time will perhaps be spent in the most arduous labor in order to
procure the means of obtaining the aid of books and teachers to enrich
the other half; and no self-denial in dress or physical indulgence seems
painful, when weighed against the pleasure of increasing the means of
education. Here is genuine love of learning, and the result of its
efforts will prove the truth of the old adage, "Where there is a
will there is a way." This family is acting out its life's love
understandingly and with fixed purpose.

Perhaps in the very next house to this is another family of not nearly
so small property. They too profess great love of and desire for
education; but there is no corresponding effort. They must dress with a
certain degree of gentility, and they must not make an effort to earn
money by any means that would seem to lower their standing in society;
and, moreover, they are indolent, and the effort that the denial of
physical indulgences requires seems insupportable to them. The parents
of this family will often be heard lamenting that their children cannot
have an education; and if one should venture to indicate the possibility
of their obtaining one for themselves as their neighbors are doing, they
will reply that their children have not strength to struggle along in
that way, or that they are too proud to get an education in a way that
would seem to place them in point of social rank below any of their
fellow-students. This family are acting out their life's love just as
thoroughly, though not as understandingly, as the other. They do not
desire education from love for it, but because it would give them a
certain standing in society, and not having the means of indulging
vanity in this direction, they turn to dress and idleness, as easier
signs of what is vulgarly called gentility. Still these persons would
deem you unjust and unkind if you told them they were living in
ignorance because they had no true love for education; and they would
hardly deem you sane should you tell them that the Character of every
human being is the sum and continent and expression of all that he best
loves.

We cannot truly love anything that we do not understand,--anything that
has not a distinct existence in our thoughts and imaginations; and all
of Character that we love and can clearly image to ourselves we can
bring out into life. The Affections are the children of the Will, and
if the Will be determined and steadfast, there is no limit but the
finiteness of humanity to the progress in whatever is undertaken. When
we love ardently, all effort seems light compared with the good we
expect to derive from the possession of that which we love. If we become
weary and faint by the way, it is because we lack intensity of love.

In reading the lives of distinguished men, we find that, in the pursuit
of whatever has raised them above the mass of men, they knew no
discouragement, acknowledged no impossibility. We read of travellers
who, to satisfy a burning curiosity for discovery, pass through peril
and fatigue that is fearful for us even to think of; and yet they, so
intense was their love for what they sought, encountered all with a
determination that made suffering and danger indifferent, nay, almost
acceptable to them. So the inventor labors, year after year, through
poverty and privation, compensated for all by the anticipation of the
satisfaction that will be his when his darling object is attained. So
the student, the philanthropist, the statesman, labors in like manner,
lighted by thought, cheered by imagination, warmed by love. Needful as
may be the light and the cheer, it is the warmth only that can give
life. We may know and imagine, and yet perform nothing; but when love
is wakened, performance becomes a necessity of our being; and every
sacrifice of momentary pleasure we make in order to obtain the fruition
of our desires is not only without pain, but it is sweet as self-denial
to a lover, if perchance he may give pleasure thereby to the object of
his passion. It is the merest self-delusion for any one to sit still and
say, "I love this or I love that trait of Character; but it is not in my
powder to gain it." They who love do not sit still and lament. Love is
ever up and doing and striving. They who sit still and lament, love the
indulgence of their own indolence better than aught else, and what they
love they attain. .

It is of course impossible that all should become distinguished by the
efforts they may make in life; and this is not what we should aim at
in the training of Character. To be distinguished implies something
comparative,--implies, if we aim after becoming so, that we seek to be
superior to others. This is not an aim that can be admitted in Christian
training. Character is something between us and our God, and every
thought we admit that savors of rivalry or emulation in our efforts
degrades them, and takes from them the sanctity that can alone insure
success. The moment that finds us saying, "I am glad that I am better
than my neighbor," or even, "I desire to be better than I wish to see
him," that moment finds us destitute of a true conception of Christian
charity. We cannot attain to a healthy growth of Character until,
smitten by the beauty of excellence, we worship its perfection in our
Lord and Saviour, and with hearts fixed on him, strive, trusting in his
aid, to be perfect even as he is perfect. In this effort we must shut
out from our hearts every emotion that cannot be admitted into our
prayers to him for light and strength. Are we sorrowful that our
neighbor is gaining upon the way faster than ourselves, let us remember
that this emotion is virtually a prayer that his strength may be
lessened for our sake; and let us change it as quickly as we can to a
more earnest longing after our own growth, without comparing ourselves
with any human being. Elation, if we think we have passed another in the
race, is a vice of the same character as envy at another for surpassing
us. Such envy and such elation are children of that pride of heart that
shuts the door on all brotherly love. It is that vice by which Cain
fell, and so far as we admit it into our bosoms we voluntarily become
the children of Cain.

The Lord tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven and its
righteousness, and that all other good things shall be added unto us.
We cannot suppose he meant by this that the reward of virtue was to be
found in houses and lands, or worldly wealth of any kind, although he
enumerated these things in the promise; for we know that these are,
perhaps, as often possessed in abundance by the basest of men as by the
most virtuous. How, then, are we to understand this promise? To seek the
kingdom of heaven and its righteousness is to serve the Lord with all
the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and the rewards appropriate
to such service surely cannot be counted in silver and gold. These may
adorn the happiness that virtue gives; but they cannot constitute it.
He who labors simply for the love of wealth is content if he obtain
the reward he seeks; but he who labors to obtain the fully developed
character of a man,--the image and likeness of God,--if he attain
nothing beyond wealth, would feel such reward to be only a mockery
of his desires. Such labor lifts us above the happiness external
possessions can give, and bestows upon us a wealth that the world cannot
take away. He who wishes to serve God acceptably, cultivates all his
capacities to the best of his ability, in order to increase his power
of leading a useful life, and is therefore constantly adding to
himself possessions that can never leave him;--rational and spiritual
possessions which, in relation to our internal life, correspond to
worldly possessions in relation to our external life, and were therefore
signified in the parabolic language of the Lord.

When the philosopher of old lost the library he had been all his
life-long collecting, he exclaimed, "My books have done me little
service if they have not taught me to live happily without them." He had
made their contents his own by diligent study, and no power could take
this from him, and they had made him wise by their instructions, so that
he could possess his soul in patience under external losses of any kind.
The man who studies books, though he may not own a volume, makes them
his own far more completely than the bibliomaniac who spends a fortune
in filling his library with choice editions of works life is not long
enough to read. So it is with works of art. He who can most truly
appreciate them is he who really owns them. One man will fill his house
with pictures and statues and all beautiful works of art, because the
possession of such things gives distinction in society. He collects
them, not because he loves art, but because he loves himself; and
values them precisely in proportion to the sums of money they have cost
him. Those among his visitors who love art for its own sake, and have
learned to appreciate such things justly, have a pleasure incomparably
more interior and profound in gazing upon them than he who rejoices in
having paid large sums of money for them; and surely no one of such
visitors would exchange his power of appreciation for the others
external possession of them. Who, then, is the true owner, if not he who
feels most delight in contemplating them, and who has the most delicate
perception of all their shades of beauty?

In the highest of all enjoyments of the eye, that which we derive from
the contemplation of external nature, the man whose soul is most deeply
thrilled by its beauty, whose heart rises in worship as he gazes upon
the mountains in their calm sublimity, and remembers how the Lord
frequented such heights for prayer, and who wanders beneath, the shadows
of the woods, feeling that "the groves were God's first temples," this
man surely has the kingdoms of the earth in closer possession than he
who holds thousands of acres in fee.

Whatever possessions we can name, whether external or internal, whether
of the heart, the head, or the hand, it is love by which we truly hold
them. Nothing is ours that we do not love, and through love we obtain
possession of all that our hearts crave.

The love, however, that is so strong to obtain must be no superficial
sentiment, but an inward passion of the heart. So long as we live in
thought and imagination we are very apt to mistake mere sentiment for
love; but the difference will show itself so soon as we begin to act.
Sentiment is soon wearied by labor and difficulty in its pursuit of
mental attainment, soon disgusted by squalor or offended by ingratitude
in its attempts at benevolence, soon discouraged by the hardness of its
own heart when it endeavors to acquire self-control, or to gain such
virtues as seem in the abstract lovely and delightful. In short,
sentiment wants a royal road to whatever it strives to reach. Love, on
the contrary, is too much in earnest to be dismayed by any impediment.
It will not stop half-way and make excuses for its short-comings. It
rests not in its course until it has gained what it seeks; and then it
rests not long, for all true love "grows by what it feeds on," and every
height of excellence we reach does but enlarge the field of vision and
show us new countries to be won.

Admitting love to be, indeed, this intense and all-pervading power, and
the very life of our souls, the importance of training ourselves to love
only that which is pure and true at once becomes manifest. The heights
of heaven are not farther from the depths of hell than are the results
that come to us if we seek the pure and the true from those which
inevitably occur when the choice falls upon the impure and the false.
Let no one think to dwell in safety because he has not deliberately said
to himself, "I choose the impure and the false"; for if the pure and the
true be not deliberately and voluntarily chosen, the heart out of
its own inherent selfishness and worldliness will unconsciously sink
gradually, but surely, into the impure and the false. There is no
half-way resting-place for humanity between good and evil. We are always
sinking, unless we are rising; going backward, unless we are pressing
forward.

Much is said of the truth and purity of childhood, and they are very
beautiful, for the angels that care for children do continually behold
the face of the Heavenly Father,--do stand perpetually within the
sphere of absolute truth and purity. But soon the child slips the
leading-strings of its guardian spirit, and comes into its own liberty;
and now, unless it freely chooses to follow with willing and constant
step in the same path wherein it has thus far been led, it will wander
from side to side, increasing at each turning the distance that
separates it from the way of life, until at last it may wander so far
that it loses the desire and even the memory which might lead it
to return. Vicious propensities will, perhaps, begin to show
themselves; and in the hardened and shameless youth it will be hard to
recognize any trace of the innocence of infancy. But, perhaps, instead
of viciousness, carelessness is developed, and youth is brightened by
gayety, amiability, and ready generosity. Occasional derelictions from
truth and honor find ready apologists among friends, because the boy or
the girl is so "good-hearted"; but a closer inspection readily shows
that the goodness of heart is very superficial, that the left hand is
often unjust while the right is generous, that a lie is no offence to
the conscience, if it be a good-natured one, and in short that very
little dependence can be placed on the uprightness that has no firmer
base than good-heartedness. Young persons of this sort are sometimes
led away to commit some act so base that their eyes are opened to the
dangers that beset the path in which they are travelling, and in sorrow
and dismay they turn to seek the way of innocence whence they had
wandered. Too often, however, the carelessness of youth passes into the
indifference of adult life and the callousness of old age. What can be
more revolting than an old age cold, hard, and selfish? Yet this is the
natural and almost unavoidable result of a youth that does not fix its
heart in unwavering love upon truth and purity,--whose aspirations are
not for those things which cannot grow old, and which the world can
neither give nor take away. A heart filled with love for excellence can
never grow old; for it will go on increasing in all that is lovely and
gracious so long as it lives; and where there is perpetual growth of the
faculties there can be no decay. We grow old, not by wear, but by rust;
and we can never become the prey of rust while our faculties are kept
bright by the power and the exercise of earnest love. The fleshly body
must grow old and die, for it is of the earth earthy; but it is by our
own weakness and indolence if our spiritual body ever gathers a wrinkle
on its brow. When the fleshly body drops from us, what must be our
shame and our despair if we rise in a spiritual body deformed with evil
passions, or corrupt with the leprosy of sin. Too many, alas! spend all
their energies in feeding and clothing and sheltering the natural body,
leaving the spiritual body hungry and naked and cold. We sometimes hear
wonder expressed that a mind thus starved has become super-annuated and
doating, while the body still carries on its functions with vigor; but
had the body been treated with a similar neglect, it would have long
before returned to the dust. The growth of the spiritual body should be
continuous from the cradle through eternity; and seldom can any other
reason, than our own neglect, be assigned for its disease or decay. The
bread of life is perpetually offered for its support, and if it refuses
to eat, its death is on its own head.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13