Gold may depreciate, stocks rise or fall, and business values change so
as to leave the market in panic, but every man on the street or in the
store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unvarying, and
that is character. Every other asset may be swept away and success
still achieved if this remain; every other aid may be at its best and
failure only await him who lacks the wealth of character.
Character is that of which reputation is but the echo, often mistaken
and misleading. Character is the last, the ultimate, value of life.
It is the trend of the whole being towards the best. It is the passion
and power that holds one true despite all persuasion.
It is the one thing worth having, because upon it all other values
depend. The wealth of the whole world still leaves poor him from whom
the soul, the power to appreciate, the purity of heart which sees God
and the good, the peace and quietness of a good conscience, have fled.
When we turn away from our fighting for fame and our grinding for gold
long enough to think, then we know that the things within determine
wholly the value and reality of all things without.
The wise ever have set this treasure above all others. Happy the
people that love righteousness more than revenue, the way of virtue,
the clear eye, the upward look, and the approval of a good conscience
above all other prosperity or advantage. The days of national
greatness ever have been those when the things that make manhood bulked
far above all other considerations. Alike to people and individuals,
the imperishable value ever has been that of character.
This asset comes not to a man by accident. He who is rich in
character, whose success in many ways is built upon his resources in
this way, does not just simply happen to be good, true, and square.
There is a price to character; it costs more than any other thing, for
it is worth more than all other things. Essentially it never is
inherited, but always acquired by processes often slow and toilsome and
at great price.
If you would be perfect you must pay the price of perfection. Unless
the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your
possession. Dreams of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it
might have been achieved. No man ever finds character in his sleep.
The education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the
education of the head. The school of character has an infinite variety
of courses and an unending curriculum.
Folks who are sighing for goodness usually go away sorrowful when they
learn what it costs. But life ever is putting to us just such tests as
the wise teacher put to the rich young man. You say you desire
character, the perfection of manhood or womanhood above all other
things; do you desire this enough to pay for it your ease, your coveted
fame, your cherished gold, perhaps your present good name and peace of
mind? Is the search for character a passion or only a pastime?
This does not mean that this prize of eternity falls only to those who
devote themselves wholly to self-culture, to the salvation of their own
souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves, but they have
lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living, to save
them from the things that blight and damn the soul. Like the Leader of
men they have found the life unending by laying down their lives,
paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and
honour and purity, love and kindness and justice might remain to man.
The world's wealth depends not on what we have in our hands, nor even
on what we can carry in our heads. It depends on the things that we
have and the beings we are in our hearts. Fools we are who live only
to make a living, houses, shelter, food, rags, and toys, who might live
to make a life, and to mold lives, to earn the riches and honour
enduring; who have not learned the gain of all loss that leads the
heart to look up, the joy of all sorrow that sweetens the soul, and the
profit from every sacrifice that is a paying of the price of perfection.