Page 14 - 102717-James Allen-Byways to Blessedness-flipbookversion_Neat

10 BYWAYS TO BLESSEDNESS

thought he thinks, every word he says, every act he does, and every work to which he puts hand
and heart. His character from moment to moment is a graduating quantity, to or from which some
measure of good is added or subtracted during every moment, and the gain or loss is involved,
even to absoluteness, in each thought, word, and deed as these follow each other in rapid
sequence.
He who masters the small becomes the rightful possessor of the great. He who is mastered by
the small can achieve no superlative victory.
Life is a kind of cooperative trust in which the whole is of the nature of, and dependent upon,
the unit.
A successful business, a perfect machine, a glorious temple, or a beautiful character is evolved
from the perfect adjustment of a multiplicity of parts.

The foolish man thinks that little faults, little indulgences, little sins, are of no consequence; he
persuades himself that so long as he does not commit flagrant immoralities he is virtuous, and
even holy; but he is thereby deprived of virtue, and holiness, and the world knows him
accordingly; it does not reverence, adore, and love him; it passes him by; he is reckoned of no
account; his influence is destroyed. The efforts of such a man to make the world virtuous, his
exhortations to his fellow-men to abandon great vices, are empty of substance and barren of
fruitage. The insignificance which he attaches to his small vices permeates his whole character and
is the measure of his manhood: he is regarded as an insignificant man. The levity with which he
commits his errors and publishes his weakness comes back to him in the form of neglect and loss
of influence and respect: he is not sought after, for who will seek to be taught of folly? His work
does not prosper, for who will lean upon a reed? His words fall upon deaf ears, for they are void of
practice, wisdom, and experience, and who will go after an echo?
The wise man, or he who is becoming wise, sees the danger which lurks in those common
personal faults which men mostly commit thoughtlessly and with impunity; he also sees the
salvation which inheres in the abandonment of those faults, as well as in the practice of virtuous
thoughts and acts which the majority disregard as unimportant, and in those quiet but momentous
daily conquests over self which are hidden from other’s eyes.
He who regards his molest delinquencies as of the gravest nature becomes a saint. He sees the
far reaching influence, good or bad, which extends from his every thought and act, and how he
himself is made or unmade by the soundness or unsoundness of those innumerable details of
conduct which combine to form his character and life, and so he watches, guards, purifies, and
perfects himself little by little and step by step.
As the ocean is composed of drops, the earth of grains, and the stars of points of light, so is life
composed of thoughts and acts; without these, life would not be. Every man’s life, therefore, is
what his apparently detached thoughts and acts make it. There combination is himself. As the year
consists, of a given number of sequential moments, so a man’s character and life consists of a given
number of sequential thoughts and deeds, and the finished whole will bear the impress of the
parts.

“All sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,