formity. We are
becoming, as the days and years pass on, what we shall be in our future
earthly life, what we shall be when that life is ended. No one becomes
what he is at once, whether what he is be good or bad. You may have
seen in the winter-time an icicle forming under the eaves of a house.
It grows, one drop at a time, until it is more than a foot long. If
the water is clear, the icicle remains clear and sparkles in the sun;
but if the water is muddy, the icicle looks dirty and its beauty is
spoiled. So our characters are formed; one little thought or feeling
at a time adds its influence. If these thoughts and feelings are pure
and right, the character will be lovely and will sparkle with light;
but if they are impure and evil, the character will be wretched and
deformed.

Fairy tales tell us of palaces built up in a night by unseen hands, but
those tales are not half so wonderful as what is going on in each of
us. Day and night, summer and winter, a building is going up within
us, behind the outer screen of our lives. The storeys of it are being
silently fashioned: virtue is being added to faith, and to virtue is
being added knowledge, and to knowledge is being added brotherly
kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity; or meanness is being added
to selfishness, and greed to meanness, and impurity, malice and hatred
become courses in the building. A wretched hovel, a poor, mean,
squalid structure, is rising within us; and when the screen of our
outward life is taken from us, this is what we shall be.

II. Character is independent of reputation and circumstances.--A man
may be held in very high esteem by the world, and yet may be a very
miserable creature so far as his character is concerned. The rich man
of the parable was well off and probably much thought of, but God
called him a fool. Here is a man who is greatly esteemed by the
public; he is regarded in every way as admirable. Follow him home, and
you find him in his family a mean and sordid soul. There you have the
real man. We cannot always judge a man by what he has, or by what he
appears to us; for what he is may be something very different. "These
uniforms," said the Duke of Wellington, "are great illusions. Strip
them off, and many a pretty fellow would be a coward; when in them he
passes muster with the rest." We must not confound the uniform with
the man: we are often too ready to do so. _To a certain extent_ we can
form an idea