Life is For Character, and Character For Immortality

"And endurance produces character, and 
character produces hope... Romans 5:4

 LIFE IS FOR CHARACTER, AND CHARACTER FOR IMMORTALITY.
CARDINAL J. H. NEWMAN.

      WHAT is our life for? There can be but one answer. This world is a training-school for character; as a pleasure-garden or a workshop it is a failure. Its flowers fade, its beauties pall, its work is never done, and is often broken off in the midst, or at the very beginning. There must be some better vindication of the Creator. It is this: The world is a school-house for man, for the whole of man. He has numerous faculties and powers; none can be left out. He has body, intellect, sensibilities, will. Are these all of man? Has he no conscience, no religious aspiration, no "longing after immortality?" Philosophy must include all the facts. Any view of life which debars from the fullest culture any part of our complex nature is essentially defective, and any view which omits the highest part is practically false.

      This last indictment will be found to stand against the scheme of culture drawn out in the eloquent words of Mr. Huxley: ''That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order-ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.'' Lovely picture of a culture radically defective; and in this defective form absolutely impossible, for lack of the divine element. No man ever yet trained ''a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience,'' and learned ''to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself,'' save under the searching eye of God, and by the transforming energy and abiding inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

      There is painful proof that many professing Christians have no better notions of the possibilities of noble culture which every day affords than are indicated in our quotation from Mr. Huxley. They prize not the moments as gold dust, and are often laboriously occupied in 'killing time.' A competent authority declares the end of life to be to ''seek for glory, honor, and immortality:'' the glory of a true, symmetrical, godly character; the honor such a character is sure to win, and the immortality to which it leads.