T[ As you pass along the spacious nave of some ancient cathedral, and your eye rests upon the exquisite carving which adorns each arch and mullion and corbel, you might be disposed to think that so much art was no part of the original design, that what you saw and admired was the effect of skilful ornamentation, laid on, superimposed upon the original structure after the building was completed. But this is not so. In the best specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, every single piece of
1 L. A. Banks, The Sinner and his Friends, 168.
8 C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 220,
JEREMIAH xiii. 23 67
carving is wrought out of the solid stone; nothing is added or laid on. The building has grown in beauty as it grew in size and dignity, step by step, until it approached completion in fulfilment of the architect's design. Those highly decorated corbels, that lovely tracery in the windows, those richly ornamented capitals, festooned, perhaps, with vine or oak leaves and hanging in natural clusters of grapes or acorns, so perfect that you feel you could go and pluck them from the stony stems out of which they spring, and from which they are suspended — all this delicate carving is inwrought in the actual material of the building itself. It is so with character. It must not be a something laid on, but inwrought, worked up out of the material of circumstance and wrought into the texture of our lives. The thin veneer of culture, the artificial polish of good breeding and good manners, is no substitute for character.1
2. But there is another, an opposite, habit of soul — that of living to God, with God, and in God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the other, yet, like it, formed by a succession of acts, each easier than the last, and each making the next easier still. We must admit God into our life, and allow Him to shape and hallow our habits. There are two aspects of character, the Divine and the human ; two determining influences at work, God and circumstance. In the lower aspect, character is the harvest of the years : a result of the amalgamated labours and trials, the conflicts and decisions, of this life, in which all the accumulated joys and sorrows, the hopes and regrets, of the past have registered their mark and left their impress upon the man. In the higher aspect, character proceeds from the touch of Divinity. It is the shaping of the human soul by the hand of God Himself.
There are thousands of people in the world with abilities that remain undeveloped, and talents that are wasted and thrown away. Poets, philosophers, architects, mathematicians, statesmen who are lost to the world through their genius never having been discovered; men whom circumstance has shunted from the path of fame and left to die in ignorance of powers which might otherwise have enriched mankind. The talent was there, latent in the mind, but it remained hidden and suppressed, waiting for education to draw it out. It is so with religion.
1 V. R. Lennard, Our Ideals, 90.
68 HABIT
The instincts of prayer and praise, of faith, hope, and love, are not dead, even where they remain passive and inoperative ; they are hidden and suppressed in the case of every man who leads a godless life, buried deep down within the soul under the accumulated load of worldly cares and alien associations, but they are still alive, like seeds lying through the long winter, forgotten in the earth, waiting for the return of spring to woo them from their hiding-place.
3. We must resolutely draw out the good which is the opposite of the evil we are indulging. And by educating, by drawing out more and more, the desire after this good, the evil is more and more put to flight. Thus the way to overcome inatten- tiveness of the mind is not so much to fix our attention on the fault as to cultivate and educate its opposite, concentration of mind. So the unhappy custom of always seeing the failings in our neighbours is best met by cultivating the spirit of charity, by going with those people who are opposite to ourselves in this respect ; by endeavouring to look at the world in a larger, kindlier, and more gracious spirit ; so those who are slaves to fleshly lusts may gradually diminish the power of these things by occupying their minds with chaste thoughts and images, and reading books which foster the growth of a pure imagination; and those who have the miserable habit of grumbling at life, which you will generally find where there is most to be thankful for, can by educating the spirit of gratitude put this tendency to flight, which more than any other takes all the savour out of life, and turns its sweetest blessings into bitterest gall.
^[ Why should we think so dolorously of habit — this law of life ? Like all God's swords of truth, it is two-edged, and turns both ways, working for good as much as for ill. It is a friendly ally that we find in this solemn law of habit, as it may also be an enemy.
Commonly, when men speak of habits, they have bad habits in their mind. As Professor James of Harvard says, in his Talks on Psychology : " They talk of the smoking-habit, and of the swearing-habit, and of the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit, or the moderation-habit, or the courage-habit." After a certain output of deliberate effort and a period of practice, the vital virtues become second-nature ; we acquire the instinct for self-denial, the prayer-habit, the Bible-reading-habit, the