ACTIONS

The only thing in which we can be said to have any property, are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we can not be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing; and their value will be confirmed and established by those two sure and stateless destroyers of all other things—Time and Death.

Character is formed by a course of actions, and not actions by character. A person can have no character before he has had actions. Though an action be ever so glorious in itself it ought not to pass for great, if it be not the effect of wisdom and good design. Great actions carry their glory with them as the ruby wears its colors. Whatever be your condition or calling in life, keep in view the whole of your existence. Act not for the little span of time allotted you in this world but act for eternity. Yonder lies one who has gone to the silent shore; he realizes now that his acts are irrevocable—he feels what beforehand he fancied—that time can not alter them, that eternity can not change them. Beside the bier there stands a weeping friend; and too late he finds that tears can not efface his acts, that repentance can not amend them; too late he finds that every act of harshness, every bitter word, every sarcastic expression, lives forever; too late he finds that unseen wings have borne his deeds beyond the flight of love, and he can never recall them to his embrace again. We are not acting for the present, but working for eternity. Every act becomes a centre of pulsations that widen throughout existence, and re-centre in a thousand crossing waves from every hill, and house, and tree.

Little acts are the elements of true greatness. They raise life’s value like the little figures over the larger ones in Arithmetic, to its highest power. They are tests of character and disinterestedness. They are the straws upon life’s deceitful current, and show the current’s way. The heart comes all out in them. They move on the dial of character and responsibility significantly. They indicate the character and destiny. They help to make the immortal man. It matters not so much where we are as what we are. It is seldom that acts of moral heroism are called for. Rather the real heroism of life is, to do all its little duties promptly and faithfully.

It is the bubbling spring which flows gently, the little rivulet which runs along day and night by the farm-house that is useful, rather than the swollen flood or the warring cataract. Niagara excites our wonder, and we stand amazed at the power and greatness of God there as he “pours it from the hollow of his hand.” But one Niagara is enough for the continent or the world, while the same world re quires thousands and tens of thousands of silver fountains and gently flowing rivulets, that water every farm, and meadow, and every gar den, and that shall flow on every day and night with their gentle, quiet beauty. So with the acts of our lives.  It is not by great deeds like those of the martyr’s, that good is to be done, but by the daily and quiet virtues of life, the Christian temper, the good qualities of relatives and friends.

The prayer of deeds is oftener answered than the prayer of words. Deeds are fruits, words are but leaves. There is thought to be very little use in a man’s meaning well, if he cannot express his meaning by his acts.

Every man is wary and discreet in confession; it were well if they were so much so in action. Boldness in doing ill is in some sort modified and restrained by boldness in confessing it. Actions show the nature of a man, as fruit does that of a tree; while motives, like the sap, are hidden from our view. We may do a very good action and not be a good man, but we cannot do a very ill one and not be an ill man. Just thoughts often fail to produce just deeds, but just deeds never fail to create just thoughts. A man’s best monument is his virtuous actions.

Desire not to live long, but to live well:
How long we live, not years but actions tell.

Fear not to have every action of your life open to the inspection of mankind. Remember that a nicer casuist than man sees into your least actions. A man’s most glorious action will at last be found to e but glorious sins, if he hath made himself, and not the glory of God, the end of those actions.

We are not too closely to scrutinize motives, says Burke, as long as actions are irreproachable.

Even a child is known by its doings, whether his work is pure, and whether it he right.