May 1

Man molds man

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20).
“Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee” (Ex. 34:12).

Forces which invisibly mold our destiny are continually at work around us and within us. “All things by a law divine in another’s being mingle,” and there is no influence so mighty as that of spirit on spirit. We are shaped into baseness or nobleness by our companionships. They not only declare what we are, but they also make us what we are. Each man is not only forming his own character for eternity but also that of others.
When we come in contact with men we do not know what impress they leave upon us. When spiders spin their webs in bushes they leave none that you can see at midday.


But the next day the dew that has lodged upon them reveals them, and then you can see that the bushes were covered with them. And the influences which men exert upon you, you often cannot see when you receive them. It is only when they are subsequently revealed in your life that you become aware of them.
—Sel.

As diamonds are ground best with their own powder, so men are best molded by men.
—Henry Ward Beecher.

If you are not warming the world, the world is chilling you. If you take a red-hot ball out of a furnace and lay it down upon a frosty moor, two processes will go on—the ball will lose its heat and the surrounding atmosphere will gain. There are two ways by which you equalize the temperature of a hotter and a colder body, the one is by the hot one getting cold, and the other is by the cold one getting hot. If you are not warming the world, the world is freezing you. Every man influences all about him, and receives influences from them, and if there be not more exports than imports, he is a poor creature at the mercy of circumstance.
—Alexander Maclaren.

Our association with unholy people will either make them desire to be holy, or us to be unholy.

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