1933 Cedrus Yearbook

And going—and gone," said he. The people cheered and some of them cried, "We do not quite understand What changed its worth." Swift came the reply, "The touch of the master's hand." And many a man with a life out of tune And battered and torn with sin Is auctioneered cheap to a thoughtless crowd, Much like the old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, A game, and he travels on. He is going once, he is going twice, He is going—and almost gone— But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd Never can quite understand, The worth of a soul and the change that was brought By the touch of the Master's hand. —Myra Brooks Welch. The Fountain of Good Character Not one of us begins with a character. Each man must build his own house of per- sonal character. It does not exist until he has brought efforts to bear in the organization and coordination of materials provided. What we have are impulses, instincts, tendencies, and sentiments. Until these are organized and regulated, we have no character. The strong character is that which is able to subdue these tendencies, impulses, senti- ments, under the domination of some motive; the good character is that of the man whose dominating motive is a good one. The weak character is that which is deficient in the organzing, coordinating power. Character may be strong without being good. A man might marshal all his powers under the dominating motive of money-making, and he might be very strong, and very successful in the worldly sense, and it is quite possible that his success would remain with him to the end of his days. He might even die a mil- lionaire. Nobody would call him a weakling; he certainly would have had strong charac- ter. Or perhaps his dominating motive was power; he had the ruling passion. He made all his raw material of character, so to speak, subserve that purpose. Wonderful success may have attended the effort. Here, again, there was strong character. It may not have been good, it may have been tyrannical and despotic, but there is no doubt about its strength. Here are two types building character without God, that, without reference to the highest, without giving any religious consideration a controlling place. Can it be said, then, that these men build character in vain?. They achieved pretty well what they set out to achieve; the man meant to make money and he made it; he meant to have power and he got it; the building has not been in vain from that point of view at all. It has only been in vain in view of the higher possibilities in each case. By a worldly standard each of these two men has been eminently successful. But measured by the higher possibility of human nature, these men are failures—the rich man is poverty-stricken, the powerful man is a weakling. Measured by a spiritual standard the despot is a slave, the tyrant is Page Fifty-five