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In the national circle we study immigration.

And in the international circle we face the supreme task of this generation to achieve a "GOVERNED WORLD."

The Duty of Intelligent Self-Love

Now let us go through these circles again, more deliberately, with a youth just passing from boyhood into manhood as the starting point of our study. He is at the end of the "teen age"; has left behind the affections of childhood; has not yet put on the enduring affections of manhood. Self-love is in command.

But let no one think that self-love is the same as selfishness. Some one has said that “dirt is matter out of place.” Selfishness is self-love out of place. Self-love has a rightful place the place Jesus gave it as the third great commandment. When Jesus gave "two great commandments," as we commonly say, he really gave three: "Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself," for the command "love thy neighbor as thyself" implies that command which is voiced in Shakespeare's noblest passage, “Love thyself-last." The trouble is that self-love very often. climbs above love for others; then it becomes selfishness— self-love out of place. Self-love also has a great propensity to get above love for God; then it becomes selfishness—self-love out of place. But self-love in the third

place is a divinely-commended, divinely-commanded

virtue. That's what we mean by self-respect, self-reverence, self-control. That's what we mean when we say, "Be good to yourself."

One of the most important duties of parents and teachers is to develop in the foundations of character the firm conviction that the evils which boys and girls are urged by the home, the school, and the Church to avoid are against their own welfare and should be "cut out" not alone for

God's sake and for the sake of humanity, but also for their own sakes, for the sake of a more useful and so a happier life here as well as hereafter.

Never were the proofs of this so abundant and conclusive, and so much in line with the dominant interests of boys and young men. Bad morals are bad manners, and they are also bad for health and a hindrance to success.

Athletic Success Dependent on Good Habits Ask your boy what have been the conditions of athletic success from the time of the earliest Olympic games in Greece to the latest league championship ball game.3 He should be able to tell you how the Greek athletes "spent ten months in preparing for those great contests, abstaining from every kind of food or drink or pleasure that would weaken their bodies," just as contestants in boat races, foot races, and other games do today. Strange that very few saw for centuries after those games began that the wine that would not win a foot race could not help but only hinder everywhere in the race of life.

Your boy should also know that Connie Mack, Manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, a baseball club which has again and again won the world championship in baseball, said of ball players of all the great clubs: "Some of the clubs have a rule prohibiting the players from smoking cigarettes. Others prefer to put the men on their honor. Most of the players realize that the use of cigarettes is very detrimental to their playing and therefore refrain from using them." There are other habit-forming

3 There is much literature that can be secured free and more at small cost that shows young men and their parents and teachers how to achieve the physical health and strength which is a large factor both in happiness and in success. One of the best of these documents is "Keeping Fit," published by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Harrisburg. It is so good that the United States Health Service, Washington, D. C., keeps a supply and sends them to those who inquire from other States. The Y. M. C. A. everywhere will gladly advise young men where to get other helpful reading on health and strength.

drugs and evil habits also, and some unhealthy foods, that athletes avoid. Ask your boy and girl to investigate and report what athletes in training cut out. And ask your boy also whether he thinks anyone is fair to himself or to his employer who will not give up these harmful things to be efficient in work, as others give them up to win in play. Ask him, too, whether, in these days when there is so much testing of "efficiency," he can afford to jeopardize the "fitness" on which depend the getting and holding a job and larger opportunities for a useful life, for the sake of any harmful pleasure.*

Even in school days it pays to behave, for the card system now being developed in schools all over the land will soon be like the open books of the Judgment Day to pupils of rowdy records when they apply for important positions in business.

It has been profoundly said that “self-denial is self-love living for the future." What that means we may be helped to understand by the story of Jacob and Esau. When the latter, the red-headed, reckless hunter, came in from his hunting he was entitled by his "birthright," like the elder son in the household of a British lord, to the larger share of the family property and the family honors. In Esau's case the birthright assured him also a special blessing of God for this world and the other. But he was hungry, and Jacob had some fragrant soup ready, no doubt to tempt him. "Give me that hot soup," said Esau; and Jacob said, "The price is your birthright." He was offering fifteen minutes' enjoyment of appetite for all that is most valuable in time and eternity. But Esau accepted the hard terms. And no skeptic has ever challenged the seemingly incredible story, for every observing man knows that this history is repeating itself every day. Young men and

4 Sce chart in Part Second in Round Table on I.

young women, and even older ones, every day sacrifice for fifteen minutes' enjoyment of appetite or passion their health and self-respect, the good opinion of men, and the approval of God. Oh that Esau had said, "Keep your soup, I'll keep my birthright: I'll deny myself, I'll be good to myself."

Robert Browning, in Rabbi Ben Ezra, on
Flesh and Spirit:

Let us not always say,

"Spite of this flesh today

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the
whole!"

As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry, "All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than
flesh helps soul."

From the Y. M. C. A. "Pioneer Book"

Self-denial properly defines the giving up of something that may be pleasant today that means headache tomorrow, and heartache for all the coming years.

Self-Discovery and Self-Mastery

It is pertinent to add two incidents-one of self-discovery in childhood, the second a story of self-mastery, which is the climax of self-love.

Sitting at the table the little four-year-old suddenly said, “Papa, my arm hurts me." "Why don't you say, my daughter, 'My arm hurts?' Why do you say 'it hurts me'? Is not your arm you?”.

"No," said the little thing promptly, "my arm ain't me."

"Where are you then?" asked the father. "Why, I'm inside," was the immediate reply. Descartes could not have said more.

But self-discovery should be followed by self-mastery. A little girl who had been wont to cry every time she tumbled, and that was often, came to her mother one day with the joy of a great discovery in her face. She said: “Mama, I don't have to cry when I fall down. I can just say, 'Stop that, and make me mind me." It was a discovery that some older ones should note who have not learned to say to their "nerves" and moods and passions and appetites, and to their greed: "Stop that."

"All's Love, Yet All's Law"

One of the first lessons of life should be the proof that all true law is but an expression of love. Jesus said, in substance: "Thou shalt love God, thou shalt love man, thou shalt love thyself; on these loves hangs all law." It is not really difficult to make boys and girls understand that parental laws are made by love. It is an easy step upward to show that the Heavenly Father's laws are also made "for our good always." Then let parents show that the purpose of all true laws of the State as Edmund Burke said, is to make it "easy to do right and hard to do wrong." And let it be shown that preventing wrongdoing is preventing unhappiness.

As the naturalist grows enthusiastic over some discovered law of nature, that tends to progress or harmony or beauty, so should we much more rejoice in the revelation of God's higher moral laws, as did the unknown author of the longest of the Psalms, the 119th, a harp whose ten strings are ten names for God's moral law, on which in a love-wrought acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet, two strains

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