Article October 24, 1953 Issue

TRUE CHARACTER

DOROTHY EILEEN HEYWOOD-DOVE

Experience in many phases of activity in their individual careers teaches men that success is due in greater measure to good qualities of character than to human ability. Indeed, unless ability be implemented by loyalty, wisdom, patience, persistence, courage, integrity, and control, it may prove a handicap to its possessor, because it may appear to release him from practicing the qualities mentioned above and from self-discipline, and so unfit him for the battle of life, for victory over the obstructive forces of evil seemingly arrayed against the law of progress.

"Truth and character are the two great factors on which leadership is based," said Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery in a speech delivered some time ago when receiving the freedom of the City of Bolton, Lancashire, England. He urged his hearers to acquire wisdom by mixing with good people and by studying the lives of great men. He included these comments: "Character is far more important than knowledge to our youth;" and, "Power without wisdom is very dangerous."

A dictionary defines "character" in part as "the stamp of individuality impressed by nature, education, or habit." Linking nature, or character, and education together, we may go on to discover the ideal man of God's creating, defined in the first chapter of Genesis as that which truly is. We read (verse 26), "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." This definition of man is conclusive. It describes the divine character, an invariable model to be held in thought, embodying the qualities of overcoming, of spiritual dominion, which Christ Jesus exercised with unfailing exactitude and absolute success.

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