EVERY MAN THE ARCHITECT OF HIS OWN FORTUNE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3745, 31 January 1907, Page 2

EVERY MAN THE ARCHITECT OF HIS OWN FORTUNE.

[By the Rev. W. C. Stinson. D.D. New York.]

Too many people regard their lives as marbles flung out indiscriminately on the bagatelle board of human existence. Such fatalism is expressed in this fashion ;

“lam an automaton dangling on my distinctive wire, which fate holds with an unrelaxing grasp. I am not different, nor do I feel different from my fellow men, but my eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is that I am an automatic machine, a piece of clockwork, wound up to go for an allotted time smoothly or otherwise, as the efficiency of the machine may determine.” Against the morbid and erroneous conception of life we raise' a protest and warning. Heredity and environment are not to be underrated. They are powerful factors. Nor are they to be overrated. In every man there is an untainted power, a something which passes from generation to generation untouched by change, and even though it may be shut in by evil conditions and tied to a thousand evil tendencies, yet it may assert itself and show its superiority to heredity and environment.

Man is morally free. Moral freedom is an inalienable right of every man. Deny that man has the power to choose between good and evil, then it is useless to appeal to motives. Deny moral freedom and we might as well close our churches and abolish our courts and penitentiaries,- Such denial destroys both personal accountability and personal manhood. It is for each man to say whether he will choose to be good or bad.

Man is also under law. There are laws physically governing man’s bodily nature. There are laws spiritual governing man’s moral nature. These laws, physical and spiritual, have their gravitating centre in God.

Man is under the law of the harvest. On its physical side this means the inheritance of physical characteristics. But on its moral, spiritual side it means that each man is reproducing his own character. He is repeating himself in himself. Each bad act becomes the sire of other bad acts, even as each good act becomes the sire of other good acts.

Each man illustrates in himself the law of the harvest. Whatsoever he sows he reaps. He cannot sow one kind of seed and reap another kind of harvest. If he sows to the flesh he will reap to the flesh. If he sows to the spirit he will reap to the spirit. The harvest gathered is ever larger than the seed sown. The farmer knows this ; yes, so does the moralist. For example, a man sows the love of money. What does he reap ? Dollars and cents ? Possibly; but one thing he does reap an intensifying love of money. He grows covetous and becomes more and more confined in his purpose to accumulate. He sows to the wind ; he reaps to the whirlwind.

Every man by reason of his , moral choice, and in sheer virtue of the law of the harvest, is even more intensifying his moral character either for worse or for better. The argument forces two conclusions;—

First—Each man is responsible for his own character. Each man has the liberty of morally doing as he pleases. His acts in the aggregate form his habits; his habits determine his character.

Second —Each man is responsible for his destiny. He is responsible for his destiny because he is responsible for his character. Character determines destiny, A profound truth lies in the adage of Sallust: architect of his own fortune.” Or as Eongfellow puts it:—

Prom the structure that we raise, Time is with material filled ;

Our to-days and yesterdays,

Are the blocks from which we build

‘‘Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character reap a destiny.” He that is righteous, let him be righteous still and go on being even more so ; he that is holy let him be holy still and go op being even more so.

If these words should come beneath the eye of any young man, let him consider that in youth he is at the sowing end of the harvest field. Youth is the plastic, formative period of life. During the years of susceptibility each young man is electrotyping his eternal destiny. I*et him remember his Creator in the days of youth, before the evil days come and the years draw nigh when his moral nature, no longer susceptible and formative, shall become confirmed in the habit of sin, forever petrified into adamantine hardness.