The Thinker   Address by A.S. Welch  I.S.C.  (Probably copied by Genevieve Welch)  Proverbs  XXIII-VII  "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he."  	Perhaps no utterance of holy  wit is more crowded with vital  significance. A few short and  simple words reveal the whole  process of character-making.  From the cradle of infancy to  the arm-chair of age it is man's  activities that fashion his 



intellect, sharpen his sensibilities,  shape his individuality, settle  his destiny. And the whole  ceaseless round of human  activity is comprised in the  one word thinking. No move-  ment possible to man but the  movement of thought. These organs  of sense; the eye and the ear.  This delicate mechanism of nerve  and muscle, by which thought 



is transmuted into matter, are  only the instruments which yield   to the soul their subtle service.  They indeed minister to mental  effort or reveal its results, but  their action is not my action,  their motion is no motion of  the proper self. Behind all   these, within the chambers  of consciousness where no 



eye but Gods can penetrate,  silent and ceaseless, the affirma-  tions of thought go on. And  whether flitting in fitful dreams,  or dozing in idle reveries, or   darting in swift fancies, or  delving in deep research, every  thought leaves inevitably its  traces upon the character. Traces  so inefacable  that neither  time nor eternity can wipe 



them out. In the immutable  laws of human life it is  settled that mental experiences  that are ephemoral shall produce  effects that are enduring, that  for instance, repeated  musing on trifles shall at last  harden into habits, that feeble  efforts shall finally result in   feeble powers, that dark suspicions 



impart something of their dark-  ness to the mind that entertains   them, that a low image  stains the imagination and  vitiates the memory, until, by  repetition, the murky [?] of thought  that are impure or imperfect  give permanent coloring to the   thinking soul. On the other  hand the conceptions of beauty  and truth and goodness when 



dwelt upon with a sincere  heart, the constant and loving  recognition of honor & honesty,  of gratitude sympathy, affection  and all the ideas that spring  from duty towards God or man,  lend their radiance to the  mind, and illuminate every  faculty and feeling with their  divine effulgence. 



And so with thought  for its intuition, mind grows.   The permanent enduring, im-  mortal self receives its charac-  ter from the countless reactions  of its own subtle evanescent  products. And through all  our waking hours, under  conscious thought, the inevitable  march proceeds towards intel-  lectual strength or intellectual 



weakness, towards the final  triumph of passion or of principle,  towards moral beauty or moral  ugliness. And always from  the condition that is impressible  & plastic towards the condition that  is unchangable.   	Thus at last the soul becomes  the very reflex of the ideas and  images that are habitually uppermost, 



and the final judgment will be  only the resurrection of thoughts  that have attained a life-long  mastery to applaud or to con-  demn the thinker. For these as  now, in the beginning or the  end, in youth, man hood or  old age, on Earth or in heaven.  "As a man thinketh so is he"  	Only let reason, that loftiest  of mental faculties feed upon 



the garbage of petty conjectures  of  small foibles in others or of  trifling events; and reason  shall end in itself becoming  a trifle without power & without  purpose.  Only let the thoughts  habitually goo wool gathering  instead of holding them to the  severer lines of intellectual labor  and the ultimate reward shall 



be a capacity to gather wool  rather than wisdom. Only  let the distempered fancies brood  long enough upon the sensual  images of its own creation,  and the imagination is surely  corrupted. Only let the thoughts  dwell with fervor upon the  momentary joys of passions  and appetite, and all the  lower instincts rise into vigor 



reason and judgment grow  torpid, and man is an  animal given over to grope  and grovel in the in the  darkness of mere carnality.   But expunge once and forever  all the mental pictures that  are either frivolous or corrupting  and fasten the intellectual gaze  with perpetual and unvarying  earnestness on the ideas of  



truth and duty - on the revelation  which God makes through nature  science and art, then intellectual  and moral strength are the  sure recompense.   	These facts suggest the true  method of self examination.  Scrutinize through memory the  thoughts of the immediate past  and we know ourselves with 



unerring certainty. Give me  another's consciousness for a single  hour and I will give you his  character. Tell me what he  thinks and I will tell you  what he is.  	And now let us learn the  full lesson which our text  inculcates, and read as in  letters of livid light the rule  for thinking which it so clearly 



reveals and consequently for  shaping the character. For if I  mistake not, under the light  it yields us, we may gather  into the clearest statement, the  means by which through all  our years, even to life's end, our  characters may grow in strength  and beauty, purity and truth.  I need not dwell lengthily upon 



what experience and precept  have already taught you, namely,  that the very effort by which you  exclude all trivial and unworthy  conceptions, is itself a source of   intellectual and moral strength.  The whole brood of pernicious   fancies that assail the mind in  the moment of its weakness, only in-  crease the vigor of its self control  if they be thoroughly repulsed.  



Successful resistance transforms the  Demon into the ministering Angel.  	Nor need I linger long on  another feature which our subject  discloses, namely, that intellectual  action is two-fold in effect. All  vivid ideas naturally tend to  utterance - they rush to the tongue -  they take to wing in language -  they find embodyment  in the 



forms of matter. Literature  clothes man's better thought in lan-  guage, science sorts it into classes,  art expresses it in material shapes,  and so, forever seeking outward  realization, thought rolls up the  vast aggregate of civilization, swells  the sum total of its comforts, its  beauty or deformity. But whether  good or evil, true or false, thought  reacts upon its source, recoils  upon its author and metes out 



to him in double measure the evil  or the good it works upon the   world. No human soul ever  escaped the retribution or lost the  reward which springs from   the reaction power of its own  conceptions. By a law sure  as gravitation new ideas take  on a material form and mold  the mind that gives them birth  into an immortal one. The 



sculptor cuts his concept into  marble, but more enduring  than marble is the shape the  very act gives to his conception  power. Thus thought both  modifies the world and fastens  its own quality intensified by  each repetition, upon the worker.  Evaporated water flows back always  to the sea, bloody instructions  surely return to plague the 



inventor, falsehood in each and  every instance molds the utterer  more and more nearly into the  likeness and image of the father  of lies himself. The plotter who  schemes darkly and doubtfully  against anothers reputation or  influence, plots, with a certainty   of dire fulfilment, against his  own soul. All forms and 



phrases of thought what ever  that are conceived in sin are  not only brought forth in iniquity  but leave the perpetual brand  of iniquity upon the mind from  whence they rise.  	And so every wrong of  mental origin, whether against  truth against our fellows, against  society or against the world, is  in a far more serious and 



lasting sense, a wrong against  ourselves.   	But the obverse fact  thank God, lights up the gloom   with which  human life were  otherwise hopelessly shrouded.  Faith, hope and charity, sincerity  sympathy, affection, not only  dispel the darkness of the outer  world, but they illuminate the 



soul that gives them exercise  with a light that can never  be extinguished. Truth, the  offspring of reason and reflection  carried inflexably into every act,  lends to the mind a transparency  undimmed by fleck or flaw.  Beauty, born of thought finds  lodgment in things without where  it soon decays, but cleaves 



also to the life within where it  is imperishable. The good we do  not only lives after us in the  world that is transitory, but shall  live in us in the world that is  eternal. And these are the   attributes of the soul that develops  to perfection constitute heaven whether  above or below.   	But I turn from these thrilling  truths which lie at the very 



basis of our mental constitution  to dwell upon a question which   is vital to our purpose and  which comes clearly within the   scope of our text. If thinking  molds character and character  demands a full and symetrical  growth, what are our most pressing  intellectual needs?  	One of the essential requisites 



in the building of a noble character  is an habitual fidelity in the  search for truth. To bring the  truths which regulate human con-  duct within the grasp of definite &   positive knowledge is the highest  of intellectual necessities. Inventory  the furniture of many minds and  you shall find that amid a  multitude of vague and vacillating  notions; the items of genuine