rarer thing in
this world than talent or even genius. Character is an infinitely better
thing than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity. And yet
so true is it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent,
and even bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and one
there either understands or values or pursues moral character, though it
is the strength and the beauty and the sweetness of the soul.

We naturally turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character.
Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own. Butler's
genius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's. Butler had not
that splendid imagination which those two masters in character-painting
possessed, but he had very great gifts of his own, and he has done us
very great service by means of his gifts. Bishop Butler has helped many
men in the intelligent formation of their character, and what higher
praise could be given to any author? Butler will lie on our table all
winter beside Bunyan; the bishop beside the tinker, the philosopher
beside the poet, the moralist beside the evangelical minister.

In seeking a solid bottom for our subject, then, we naturally turn to
Butler. Bunyan will people the house for us once it is built, but Butler
lays bare for us the naked rock on which men like Bunyan build and
beautify and people the dwelling-place of God and man. What exactly is
this thing, character, we hear so much about? we ask the sagacious
bishop. And how shall we understand our own character so as to form it
well till it stands firm and endures? 'Character,' answers Butler, in
his bald, dry, deep way, 'by character is meant that temper, taste,
disposition, whole frame of mind from whence we act in one way rather
than another . . . those principles from which a man acts, when they
become fixed and habitual in him we call his character . . . And
consequently there is a far greater variety in men's characters than
there is in the features of their faces.' Open Bunyan now, with Butler's
keywords in your mind, and see the various tempers, tastes, dispositions,
frames of mind from which his various characters act, and which, at
bottom, really make them the characters, good or bad, which they are. See
the principles which Bunyan has with such inimitable felicity embodied
and exhibited in their names, the principles within them from which they
have acted till they have become a habit and then a ch