The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-07-24

OF his touching, but scarcely natural
pictures of childhood, makes little
Lizzie, the angel of the old CATER
Hexam's terrible home there by the
river, to entreat her brother to secretly
steal away and never return, that he
may perchance wander to some good
Preside and become like one of the
good men they had seen on the bet
ter streets, who wear Christian
clothes and read good books and sit
in church on Sunday.
But it is not the babe and child
only that are made and marred, beau
tilted or abased, by an unconscious re-
ception of the moral or immoral air
that environs them and presses on
them; but the youth and the adult
are exposed to the same blessing or
bane. The society we move in is the
| fountain head of subtle streams that
! pour into us along ever open chan
nels and ourcharacter is transformed
accordingly. The good spirit or the
bad is evermore incarnating itself.
Hence everyone who would feel
sure that good character is being
developed within, must seek a place
pervaded by good influences and in
spirations; must avoid exposures to
the breath of evil and the faint of
vice, and covet the circle wherein re-
finement, truth, generosity, and
justice, pour out on the air their
beauty and their saving grace.
Blessed are they on whose hearts fall
only dews distilled from purity and
air fragrant from the fields of true
excellence; for they shall grow and
strengthen in the life of virtue and love.
AS the miracles of nature are now
being wrought on field and forest, in
meadow and garden, by the sweet in
fuences of the sunshine and air and
rain and dew that pass into the GEN.
trail life of vegetation, so are these
miracles of moral growth taking
place under the gracious reign of
spiritual sunlight and atmosphere.
But character has another path
along which it finds its way into our
manhood and womanhood. 1t is a
law of human nature that by way of
the mind, by the medium of ideas,
the heart may be reached and the will
taken into a noble captivity and
character created. The mind SO lies
against the heart, and the heart
against the mind, that right
thought, a great and worthy idea,
passes in to modify the entire life.
Our nature is so essentially unit
| that movement in the reason in
view of a moral or spiritual principle,
an act of reflection, is felt along all
the powers of our being, as the infu
ence impaired at one end of the cleo
trio wire steals along its entire
length.
Man is no mosaic, but an organism;
and from head to hand and foot there
runs vital connection. Life is SO
much whole that the nature of its
intelligence is reflected in its affec
tions and volitions and activities. Our
thoughts are but the preludes to our
emotions and purposes and deeds. At
the one end of the great process of
the formation OF character are good
ideas and reflections, and at the other
end are good deeds; and between
these extremes, answering to the
good thoughts and issuing in good
acts, are those fine sensibilities and
sentiments and resolutions in which
lies the sublime reality of good
character. Hence the promise of
moral enlightenment, of gazing at
lofty ideas and ideals; of sitting be-
fore mental pictures of nobility that
they may move us to a kin ired spirit
and stir us to do we'll and act in
harmony with their inspirations.
Hence the promise of Christian re-
Election to the end of Christian life
and conduct. Our minds send their
good thoughts down into the cham
bers of the heart and soul and will to
awaken the sleeping impulses and to
induce character, that best thing that
is known to man on this side the riv
er of death or on the other Our be-
ing is thus living unity, and the
ideas of an ancient Hebrew bred
Moses and a Joshua, and of our
more modern Christianity, a Paul
and John and a Fenelon and
a Lincoln. The head delivered
over it's creed to the soul. The
moral nature rose to embrace the
fat b that was dwelt on in the sea-
sons of meditation, and character
took form amid the study of princi-
pies.
Vices, remarks a contemporary, is
the most expensive luxury in which man
INDUCES. The expenditure for one vice