_My Dear Daughter:_--One great and difficult lesson is given to each of
us to learn in this life, which must be learned if we ever hope to live
happy or useful lives. It is the lesson of self-control. Parents and
teachers and circumstances may help or hinder in the learning of this
lesson; but it depends mainly upon yourself, upon your own individual
will, whether you shall learn it or not. It is the first lesson which
wise parents and teachers strive to teach a child. It is the
fundamental, the all-important lesson of life. It extends to every
department of our nature and affects every act and-event of our lives.
Take notice with me how the possession or non-possession of the power of
self-control affects the lives of young people in a few particulars.
Certain self-evident duties are imposed upon every rational being. One
of the first of these is the duty of being usefully employed a large
portion of our time. It is probable that nearly all young people have a
certain dislike for work, and self-control must come in to help them do
the work that belongs to them to do. It may help you in acquiring this
self-control to reflect often what a really great thing it is to be able
to compel yourself to do from a sense of duty what you are naturally
disinclined to do? also what an unworthy and, indeed, contemptible thing
it is not to be able to make yourself do what you know you ought to do.
You are perhaps disinclined, for instance, to rise when you should in
the morning. You feel disposed to indulge your ease and comfort, and to
lie in bed when you know you should be awake and preparing for the day.
Here is one of the very instances in which if you will learn to control
and compel yourself you will soon reap substantial reward. The more you
indulge yourself, the harder does the task of rising and getting ready
for the day become. But say to yourself, "I will waken right away," rise
and walk around a little, and you will be surprised to find how soon the
habit of prompt rising will become easy. You have your morning duties to
perform, or your lessons to learn. If you say to yourself, when it is
time you should begin, "I will not loiter, but immediately set about my
work or study," you will find in the very act and determination a help
and strength, and pleasure even, which you can never imagine before you
have experienced it. God has so made us that in the very performance of
duty, however trivial, there is a reward and strength and a very high
kind of pleasure. But we need firm self-control to compel ourselves
thus to do our duty. I shall rejoice if any words of mine lead you to
test for yourself the truth of what I have said.
Self-control should extend to our speech, temper, and pleasures. To be
able to control the tongue is rightly esteemed one of the greatest of
moral achievements. You remember what the apostle James says, that "if
any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to
bridle [control] the whole body." It is so easy to say cross or unkind
words; so easy to make slighting or gossiping remarks about companions
or friends; so hard to efface the painful effects of such hasty or
ill-considered speech. It is so easy to make a petulant or disrespectful
reply to parents or teachers when they reprove; so much harder, yet so
much better, to acknowledge a fault and feel and express sorrow for
wrong-doing. Your own conscience and consciousness tell you how much
happier you feel when you have done the latter. Yet you need, over and
over again, to fortify yourself against temptation to hasty or
ill-natured or improper speech by determining beforehand that you will
not give way to the temptation; that you will control yourself. And
whenever you have allowed yourself to be overcome by such temptation you
should make it the occasion of serious reflection and earnest resolve to
be more guarded in future. You will have attained a great deal in the
direction of high and noble character when you have learned to control
your speech. It is the same in regard to controlling your temper. But
there is one truth of which I can assure you: If you will learn to be
silent and not speak at all when you feel that your temper is getting or
has gotten the better of you, you will soon get the better of your
temper. There is no such efficient discipline for a hasty temper as
determined, self-imposed silence. Then, too, there is a dignity about
silence under provocation that is impressive and effective. The greatest
disadvantage at which any person can be placed in the eyes of companions
and friends is that of losing control of one's tongue as well as of
one's temper. In nearly every case where we receive provocation or
affront, speech may be silver, but "silence is golden." The person who
keeps control of his temper controls everyone.
Self-control, once acquired, will be the most important factor in
helping to shape your life rightly in every direction It will keep you
from hurtful indulgence in mere pleasure; from harmful indulgence in
rich or improper foods; from too much dissipation of time and thought in
social enjoyment It will help you to leave the society of companions and
other pleasures in order to put your mind upon your studies or your
tasks; help you, when you find lessons hard and long, and that earnest
work is required to learn them, to perform that long and earnest work;
help you, when you feel disposed to give way to indisposition or
indolence, to hold steadily on till your tasks, no matter what they are,
are accomplished.
And as good behavior is the root of good manners, so self-control is the
root of all true self-culture. We hear a great deal now-a-days about
culture, cultured people, cultivated society, etc., and it is a good and
natural wish to possess culture and to be classed among cultured people.
Intelligence and good manners are the only passport into the charmed
circle. Self-control will enable us to become possessed of both. It will
enable us to restrain ourselves from all rude, loud, hasty, ungentle
speech and action, help us to modulate our voices, and even cultivate
our laughter. It will also enable us, through mental application and
effort, to acquire knowledge. So abundant are the intellectual treasures
now brought within the reach of everyone by the cheapness of standard
educational works of every kind, that the young person who is not
intelligent through reading and study has only himself or herself to
blame. Self-control will help you to study and learn faithfully when you
are in school; it will help you to decide upon and carry out some useful
course of reading and study if you are not in school; and this, even
though you have many other duties to perform. In every town and village
may be found persons competent to advise and direct courses of study and
reading for those who have the energy to pursue them. You will have no
excuse at any period of your life for failure to progress and improve
intellectually, except your own inability to compel yourself to make
use of the opportunities that lie all around you.
It is hardly necessary for me to remind you of what you know so well,
that in reading you should choose only the best books. We may without
harm divert the mind for a little each day by light miscellaneous
reading, but young people especially need to be warned against
indiscriminate novel or story reading. Here again the virtue of
self-control comes in to help do the right and avoid the wrong. If you
discover that your taste is more for the improbable highly-wrought pages
of fiction than for such works as are known to everyone as standard and
improving, let it be a sign to you that you should summon your
self-control and compel yourself to a different sort of reading. If you
find that you cannot relish or fix your mind upon standard works of
history biography, travel, or any of the many excellent books written
to bring scientific knowledge within the comprehension of the general
reader, then you may conclude rightly that your mind is in a very
uncultivated state.
Your own efforts and determination--in other words, your power of
self-control--alone can effect anything worthy in self-culture. To
attain the power of self-control in a high degree is one of the greatest
and most important aims we can set before us in life. I do not believe
it can ever be attained in our own strength. To rightly control temper
and speech and conduct requires help from the divine Spirit which is
always around and over us, and within us, if we will but let our hearts
be receptive to its influences. The greatest possible help to
self-control is to learn in the moment of temptation to lift the heart
to God in earnest aspiration for His help and guidance. A sense of the
presence of God is always a strength, and help when we are conscious of
earnest effort to do right. The Bible says: "It is God that worketh in
you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." It is one of the great
mysteries and yet one of the most evident truths of life, that we must
work ourselves, and that God works in and with us, to accomplish any
good thing. That you may know and realize this truth, and learn to find
for yourself the comfort and support and strength of soul that comes
from seeking after God, is my most earnest hope and prayer for you.