“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.” Proverbs 22:1
We ought to seek to gather in this world—treasure that we can carry with us through death’s gates, and into the eternal world. We should strive to build into our lives—qualities that shall endure. Men slave and work to get a little money, or to obtain honor, or power, or to win an earthly crown—but when they pass into the great vast forever, they take nothing of all this with them!
A great conqueror who had won empires and hoards of spoil, requested that he be buried with his hands uncovered, that everyone might see that his hands were empty, that he carried away with him nothing of all his vast conquests.
Yet there are things—virtues, fruits of character, graces, victories of moral conquests, which men do carry with them out of this world. Someone says: “The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried—is character.” This is true. What a man IS, survives him. It never can be buried. It stays about his home when his footsteps are no longer heard there. It lives in the community where he was known. And that same thing—what a man IS—he carries with him into the eternal world. Money and rank and pleasures and earthly gains—he leaves behind him; but his character, he takes with him into eternity.
This suggests at once, the importance of character and character-building. A man may not be as good as his reputation. A good reputation may hide an evil heart and life. Character is not what a man professes to be—but what he really is as God sees him. Definition is important. Reputation is not character. Reputation is what a man’s neighbors and friends think of him; character is what the man is.–J. R. Miller
