The Problem of Self-Mastery

The greatest battlefield on which a man ever fought is within himself. The greatest victories are there. Victory there is the greatest victory possible in a man’s life. All the great achievements of men outside of themselves are less than the achievement of getting mastery of themselves. Victory here means victory elsewhere.

All other problems of the personal sort are included in this. Their solution is included in its solution. There must be practical understanding about sin, and real power over it, before there can be self-mastery. For it was sin that first stole self-mastery away. Selfishness must be seen and gripped in its subtle as well as its coarse forms, before the sweets of the finest self-mastery can be tasted. Doubt must be mastered, at least far enough to give a steady footing and steady going, if the fragrance of self-mastery is to fill the life. Only he who sees clearly the highest ambition of life, and holds everything else strictly under, can climb the heights here.

A man’s foes are those of his own household, the household of his own person and his own life. Victory here brings the strength that wins on every other field. And victory on any other field, or every other, is robbed of its sweets, if a man is whipped on this field of his own personality.

The man who can rule wisely and masterfully within his own spirit is greater than he who rules a state or a nation or a great corporation. It is true there must be some mastery of self before there can be mastery of others, but then we are not talking about partial mastery, except as it is a stepping-stone up to the highest.

The greatest mastery is self-mastery. The greatest man is he who has become master of himself, not in the limited sense of some who do notable things on other fields, but in the finest, fullest sense. This is the most fascinating of all problems. It is a continuous problem, ever yielding to solution, yet never fully solved. For every high level reached shows a higher beyond, so great is the possibility lying within one’s self.

Man was made like God and to have dominion over all the lower creation. That is the Bible way of saying that he was to be master of his own self, and through that self-mastery to be master of all creation. The man eager to reach the highest mastery will study God, for here is the original plan for himself. He will keep in close contact with the Original. The closer that touch the nearer does he come to his own true self.

Ditching Lifers Stream.

Self-mastery requires a full knowledge of one’s self, or at least a steadily growing knowledge. It means a reverential regard for the marvellous functions and powers that he finds within himself. Control requires knowledge, as well as more than knowledge. Increasing knowledge leads the way to increasing mastery, and should lead to greater reverence.

The man who reverences his wonderful powers is held off just that far from sin. The man who sins despises himself. Sin is never reverential. It is always profane. Self-mastery is always reverential, towards God most and first, then towards the man himself made in the image of God, and then towards all other men in that same image, and towards all of God’s creation. The man who sins is blurring and blotting out the fine image of God imprinted on himself. Knowledge of one’s self, and reverence for one’s self, are open doors, one after the other, into purity and maturity and control.

We have talked together a bit about the ideal man in the talk on ambition. And one should keep that ideal clearly in mind. There are three spheres within one’s self, the body, the mind, and the spirit. Self-mastery means fullest culture and control of all three of these. Spirit culture is the rarest to be found of any of the three. But a full, rounded culture of all three, each in itself, and each in due relation to the others, is rarer still.

But there is yet more to be said here. A man has three relationships, inward to himself, upward to God, outward to his neighbor. The relationship to God holds the key to the other two. There is ever the tendency to push some one of these at the expense of the others. How sin has unsteadied our nerves, and given a twist to our eyes! To keep true and steady the upper relation means to keep the others true too. The nearer to God a man gets the nearer does he come to his own true possible self. And the nearer to God the closer to one’s fellows always; and not only the closer, but the purer and stronger and fairer that neighborly contact will be.

Self-mastery means holding true to one’s relationships, upward, inward, outward. There are men who are regarded as masterful men who yet ignore their relationship to God. They are masterful. They reveal rare power. Yet it is one-sided. Another side, the upper, is untouched, ignored; and the one-sided mastery itself is incomplete because it can become full only through what comes in from above. The stream of life flows down from above, it flows in and through, and then flows out to others. Any other running of the stream by ditches or dams is changing nature’s order, and spoils the life. It will either stagnate and grow green sUme on its surface, or else it will run low and run out.

The Original Image.

Self-mastery means holding one’s self and one’s powers steady to their true use; not lack of use, deficiency; nor over-use, prodigality; nor misuse, the inappropriate, the improper; nor abuse, the injurious; but nature’s true, full use. It does not mean repression but control, full expression through control. It recognizes that what is not controlled goes to extremes; weak, bad, wrong extremes.

Nowhere is the hurt of sin seen more than in the unsteady, uneven swing of the pendulum of life. Sin is a sort of magnet pulling it unduly over to one- side and holding it there, or giAdng it a wobbling movement. Mastery is holding things steady to their true use. One needs to know what their true use is, and then to have the strength of purpose, and the greater strength of discipUne — tested purpose — and then something more, to hold him steady to the high aim.

Mastery of self through mastery by God, and in order to be of service to one’s fellows, is the ideal one should steadily strive for. A man should not be afraid of that fine word ideal. It is held up to ridicule quite a bit. It is sometimes used for something impractical, up in the clouds, quite out of reach. It should rather be used for that towards which a man aims. The ideal is the perfect natural standard towards which one should be ever reaching and stretching up. Jesus said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” He wouldn’t have told us to do it, if it couldn’t be, done. There is not only an ideal, “be ye perfect,” but the highest possible ideal, ‘’as your Father is perfect.”

It is a peculiar quality of the true ideal that it is never reached; for when reached it grows under the reaching touch into something finer and higher and yet more attractive. True ideals are wonderfully stimulating. They grow as they are touched. And while there is a sense of gladness and content in the touch, that very touch itself gives a yearning for a higher yet, and a new ambitious reaching on and up.

The closer a man sticks to the Original the nearer will he come to self-mastery. The original of man is God. To know God is to come to know our possible selves — the men we should be, and the men we will be. God is all the time revealing Himself to us in nature, in the wondrous Bible, in our own inner spirits. We should be eager to know Him, for so we come to know ourselves. And if we will know Him in the deeper sense of friendship’s intimacy we shall come to be like Him again. That is self-mastery. Our greatest Teacher said: ‘’This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ.”

‘’Study to Keep Quiet:’

There are four great traits of God to be seen in nature, in His Word, and in His speaking within one’s inner spirit.

God is quiet. The earth has grown noisy. Nature is still. There are storm noises and earthquakes, but these result from disturbances above and below. Both the disturbances and the noises are abnormal, not true to nature. Man has become noisy. God is quiet. Noise reveals weakness; something is out of gear or tune. Sound is rhythm. Noise is discord; it is a result of friction always, a jarring of two or more forces. The members of the orchestra are not controlled by the leader’s eye; they are free-lancing. Strength is still. It may give a sound, but it is always a sound of stillness. It is rhythmic, harmonious, musical.

God is quiet. He is revealing Himself, all the time, up to the highest possible limit, to His much-loved race of men. But He can come in only through an opened door. He can reveal Himself only to the man who opens his door. Sympathy with God, oneness of spirit with Him, is the key. A spirit of quiet stillness opens the life to this marvellous, quiet God. We can all recall how, in moments of quietness, God has spoken into the inner ear, and we have long remembered what He said. We can remember, too, how at such times His speaking has deepened the quiet in our souls. God would woo us into that quietness of spirit akin to his own, that we may be living again in our native atmosphere — His presence.

To a man absorbed in Christian activity, rushing, pushing, with nerves on tension and blood boiling, who wearily turned to God in prayer, there came one day into the inner ear, as he was on bent knees, a Voice speaking with great softness and equally great clearness, Study to he quietJ’^ It brought a great hush into his ‘spirit; in the following days it became a veritable sheet-anchor, holding the bark steady in many a storm. Its variations were brooded over that new life might come out of its inner ‘depths; “study to keep quiet”; “be ambitious to be unambitious,” in the world’s abused meaning of that word ambitious.

Many personal, practical applications, quietly, gradually worked themselves out of it into the fibre of habit. Keep the body quiet, the voice quiet, the eyes quiet, the thoughts, the imagination, the emotions quiet. Put on nature’s pneumatic tires and rubber heels. “But,” you say, “how self-conscious that must make one!” No, not if you do it quietly, naturally. Quiet does not mean repression. It means the natural expression of mastery, neither overdone nor underdone. Mastery is holding true to nature. Mastery means quietness, the quietness of rhythm, of the sun’s swing, of the dew’s fall, of God’s action in all nature, of the truly masterful man’s natural life.

As the days went their rounds, there came trooping to the support of this message, one by one, a group of quiet verses. From out the midst of that stormy Forty-sixth Psalm came the quiet, commanding note, “Be still and know that I am

God,“^ with its alternate reading, ‘’Let go and know that I am God.” Let go your will and plans and you will find Somebody’s else will and plans for you. Let go of yourself, and you will become conscious of Him. Be still, be stilly and you will find God, and in finding Him be finding your own true self, for in His image were we made. But what a lot of persistent practising that “be still” does take!

Into the hearts of many thousands have been sung, in classical music, those words of David’s, “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.’”* The margin of the Revision gives fine coloring, “Be still before the Lord.” But the beauty, as well as the deep, simple philosophy, or, rather, the beauty because of the philosophy, comes out best in Luther’s translation, “Be silent to God, and let Him mould thee.” The wondrous power of silence when it is in God’s presence, and towards Him!

The One hundred and seventh Psalm,^ which the Hebrews sang responsively in their temple service, pictures lividly such a storm at sea as many a man has known upon the sea of his life, or the inner sea of his heart. But the great change comes when the oft-repeated “they” is changed to “He” — “He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.” His hands sweep the human keyboard and discord gives way to sweet music. And what a wealth of human experience is in the next line, “Then

*Psalm 46:10. 2psaijn 37:7. Psalm 107:26-32.

are they glad because they be quiet.” The return to quiet is a return to natural life, as planned by the Giver of life.

This vein of gold comes again to the surface in the Gospels. Matthew’s kingly narrative gives the imperial touch to the same storm scene on Galilee’s blue waters: “He rebuked the vdnds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” “Rebuked!” Something was wrong; somebody misbehaving; they were raising a storm. The Master appears with His rebuke. He was recognized. There was a great calm. If He were ever recognized and honored there would always be a great calm. And there can be mastery only when there is calm, nature’s true condition. A change of figure couples with that this, also from Matthew: “And He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she arose and ministered to them.”^ The riot of fever in the blood, angry faces, green eyes, hooked fingers! His touch — the fever goes, the storm is stilled, a great calm, then service. Only calm hands can serve truly.

The Old Testament brings up a familiar line that has strengthened many a life in stress: “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.“^ Confidence is quiet. Fear is always flurried. Strength is stored away in quietness. Out of the quiet comes new strength. That exquisite, simple. Oriental love story, Ruth, has in it a bit that contains meaning for one’s heart apart from its original significance: “Sit

* Matthew 8:23-27. ^ytthew 8:15. ^jgaiah 30: 15.

still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall; for the man will not rest until he have finished the thing this day.“‘We who have Paul’s prison psalm find in its confident assertion — ‘’He who began a good work will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” — good reason for spelling Ruth’s “man” with a capital M in our personal thinking of it, and finding in that sweet story fresh stimulus to sitting still.

God revealed Himself to Elijah one morning early in “a sound of gentle stillness.“^ The shepherd singer says, “He leadeth me beside the waters of quietness.“* Job’s true comforter reminds that much troubled man, “When He giveth quietness, who then can condemn?“* Solomon’s ‘God-given wisdom has this: “A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh.“” Fitting the Ninety-first Psalm into its likely historical setting of the thirty-third chapter of Exodus suggests this free translation of its first verse: “He that goeth aside to sit still in the secret place with the Most High shall find Him coming over so close that he shall be lodging under the shadow of the Almighty One.”^ These are some of the quiet verses that grew up around that first one. And there are more. They should be looked up slowly, and breathed in deeply.

These statements reveal God. They reveal the true spirit in men who had found God, and

Ruth 3:18. Philippians i:6. *I. Kings 19:12 margin. Psalm 23:2. Job 34:29. Proverbs 14:30 (American Revision). “‘Psalm 91:1, with Exodus 33:7-11.

no Quiet Talks on Personal Problems

were living in Him. They reveal the true spirit of man. Quietness is the native air of man. All his powers work best when they work in an atmosphere of quiet. He can do better work; he can do more; he can do it more easily, for he is moving in his native element.

Quietness is a characteristic of self-mastery, as well as an essential to it. But quietness does not mean sleepiness, stupidness. It does not mean the inactivity of laziness. It means keen alertness to all that is passing, full readiness to respond, with the steam up, and the hand on the throttle while all is still and under control.

Living Musically.

A second great trait of God is rhythm. Everything He does is done with the sweet beat and swing of harmony. The word we commonly use for this is method, or system. The finer word is rhythm; that brings out the ease and music of it.

Nature is rhythmical. There’s a fine swing to it. Rhythm is music. Life is musical, though many fail to see the leader’s stick, and don’t catch the pitch nor keep time, and so flat badly and drag, and lose the uplift of it all. All growth in life is by the musical pendulum-swing back and on, with the clock hands steadily telling out the onward movement.

The waters of the sea ever flow back and on from ebb tide toward flood. The moon rises and goes down to rise a bit higher each night, in a larger circle, until the full is reached, and disaappears by the same gradual rhythmic swing. So we get a measure of time, a moon-th or month. The sun rises and falls through the same sort of rhythm, with its own variations, and a larger swing, from lowest point to highest and back to lowest, making the longer measure of our time. The seasons go from the ebb of dead winter to new spring life, then full flood of summer life, then autumn’s decHne, and dead winter, when for a while nature is at rest gathering vitahty. The day rises gradually from modest dawn to full noon, and so back to its sleep at night.

The musical rhythmic beat is in all nature and in all life. Were our ears less dulled, and less absorbed in a different sort of thing, we could evep hear the music of God in nature. Through the music of nature as well as its great beauty He speaks to us and reveals Himself. God is musical. Man’s love of music, so universal, is evidence of the self-mastery to which he was born. You can’t force music. It must go in its own time, or it isn’t music. We work best when we work musically, with a fine beat and swing to all our movements; not only best, but do most, and do it most easily.

Soldiers on march cover a greater distance, with less tire, when the band is playing. Young people in the gymnasium get more enjoyment and more good out of the exercise when it is done to the sound of the piano. So wdth the little ones in the kindergarten. Tired-out men are rested by music. The world and the Church come together here; music is the common element in the theatre and the church service. Men love music. It is a bit of the original image of God in us. Men noted for great achievement are, in varying degree, always men of method, of rhythm, of swing in the thing they do best. Self-mastery means rhythm. It requires deep peace as its basis; that is, absence of discord, and of the jarring note. As one comes back into full sweet chord with God there comes the sweet peace, and then the full swing of nature’s rhythm, and so the heritage of self-mastery.

In Step with God.

And God is unhurried; though our word for it is ‘’ slow.” We say slow because the fever of sin is in our blood, and sends us down the road on a rush. All life is fevered. The heart beats faster than normal; the temperature is too high; the eyes have an unnatural brightness; the nerves are strung up dangerously near to a break. And all the time breaks are happening. But the fever seems to intensify.

Man calls nature slow. The growth of the trees, the passing of the year through its seasons — we call these things slow. But nature reveals God. It tells both of Himself, and of His method of work. Nature seems slow because of this riot of fever in our blood. Nature is normal; the other is abnormal, not true to nature.

I suppose the insects at our feet, if they could think, would probably think our movements very slow. How long it must seem that a man’s foot stays on the ground when he is walking, even walking fast. The ant down there can scurry along several times its own length while that foot remains unmoved. But the length of the foot’s stay on one spot tells of the size of the body it is holding up and swinging forward.

God’s movements seem so slow to us. His march through history, the coming of justice to the weak and oppressed, the shining of light in the dark places — all this has so often been called slow. God is so big, so great. He is moving steadily on. The apparent slowness only spells out the greatness of His size and of His plans. It takes time to swing great things forward. Time is but a hyphen between two eternities. God lives and moves in eternity. He breathes in the atmosphere of greatness.

We are too apt to play the part of the ants scurrying hastily, hurriedly, breathlessly along, and when we do look up, if we do, think how slow that One up there does seem. But in this we are not true to our real selves. We are like God. We belong to eternity more than to time. It is this fever that’s bothering us. Man needs the soothing, controlling touch of God ever upon his life if the fever is to go, and never to return.

God is unhurried. He is keenly watching; never indifferent. He is accurate; never missing the mark of His purpose. He is prompt; never ahead of time, and never late. Man was made in the image of God. As he turns his face full up to God, and breathes in slowly and fully his native air again, he will rise again into the fine self-mastery promised for him.

But unhurried does not mean slow, nor indifferent, nor sleepy. It means the measured, onward movement of a great spirit with a great purpose and limitless power behind.

The other word for unhurriedness is patience. Nothing reveals strength more than patience, the power to hold still while waiting. Nothing disturbs much fine planning of good people more than the lack of patience. We are all children in our impatience. Patience is the most Godlike quality that man can have. It has keen eyes, and quick ears, and a warm heart; it means seeing keenly, and feeling deeply and acutely, yet holding still until the fulness of time has come for action.

Self-mastery is keeping step with God. Not running ahead of Him, nor lagging behind Him, but going at His pace. We miss much of what He is saying to us because we don’t keep His pace, and stay alongside. We lose the immense uplift of seeing His great plans and far-reaching movements in our feverish haste to do things for Him. Self-mastery means keeping His pace. It is unhurried.

Living in the Essentials,

There is always a simplicity about God and His movements. His glory is overwhelming to human eyes and senses. The chosen leaders of the new Hebrew nation could not bear the awful glory of His presence. Yet this but tells of the contrast between His glory and purity, and sinful man. “Clouds and darkness are round about Him.” Yet this reveals the tenderness that protects our weak eyes from the dazzling sight of His presence.

When He speaks in creation it is in simplest language. He walks in Eden in closest intimacy of fellowship with man with a simpHcity very winsome. jThe revelation of Himself there suggests the simplicity of greatness. Greatness is simple. And man is very great for he is in the image of of God. As he allows the image to be reproduced in him he increases in his simplicity. The spirit of self-mastery is always simple.

Sin tangles things up. It makes life complex in a confused way. It blurs and dulls our understanding, and weakens our grasp, and so things that are great but really simple seem confused to us. We get confused and tangled up. True life is simple. That word has been having new currency of late, and has been misunderstood some. It does not mean crude, nor immature, nor lacking in culture as some have thoughtlessly seemed to think. It means clear understanding of essentials and direct action. It sifts through the mix-up of our common life, and seizes upon the things that are essential, and grasps thcni firmly, and is controlled accordingly.

A huge piece of machinery seems very intricate and complex to one not experienced in its make-up and workings. But to the engineer its law of action is simple. A sense of dread sometimes fills the mind at the sight of giant wheels and beams in motion; a dread of the immense power, and of what might happen. But while conscious of the enormous power there, the engineer moves calmly in and out with his oil can, and touches the central wheels quietly. It is all simple to him, for he understands.

Being with God gives one understanding. It clears his eyes. He comes more and more to see things through God’s eyes. So he comes into the simplicity of God, and of the self -poise and self-mastery that are his birthright. He becomes simple in thinking of himself. While recognizing and reverencing the great powers within himself, he knows that these are a gijt to him. He has nothing that he hasn’t received from Another. And these powers and talents can come to their full growth only under the constant influence and presence of their Giver.

Man needs an atmosphere if he is to reveal his greatness. The tree must have its atmosphere of sunlight and air and water and food, else it cannot live. God is the atmosphere of man. Only in the presence of God, in closest intimacy with Him, under the warm touch of His breath, does he come into his growth. And getting clear in his relation to God simplifies a man’s contact with his fellows, and simplifies all of his thinking of life. Simplicity is seeing clearly what is essential and what is detail — non-essential, and being controlled accordingly. So man rises up into the full mastery of himself through his utter dependence upon God.

But simple does not mean crude nor rude, not immature nor lacking in culture. It means being controlled by the essentials, which themselves are always few and simple.

Here are found great traits of self-mastery. It is quiet, and rhythmic; it is unhurried, and simple.

The Foes of Self-Mastery.

There are four tempting demons of very subtle spirit constantly besieging the path of self-mastery. They are apt to come by turns, not all at once. They make a sort of relay race of it; as quickly as one seems held in check or winded, another takes its place, and the new arrival is usually the opposite of the last one. Yet ofttimes they come in a bunch, all together, with a rush. These four enemies are lack of use, deficiency; over-use, prodigality; misuse, the inappropriate, the improper; and abuse, the injurious.

The man who catches fire with a noble purpose is apt to be attacked by the temptation to over-use his powers. He feels the strong tide of the needs and of the possibihties of life. Life becomes to him an emergency, mth himself as the chief factor in meeting it. He seems to be occup)ing the central position; so much depends upon him. His view of the need or possibility becomes too intense. It shuts out the broader view of a plan, the great wise plan of a master Planner in which he is simply a part; an important part it may be, yet but a part; the responsibility for the whole is upon broader shoulders. This temptation comes very strongly, with the rush of a storm down the valley; many a man is swept off his feet by it.

The result is bad. Through over-use the man loses the chief thing with which to work and fight — his mastery of himself; the working, fighting power. The cause he would carry through is helped much, and may be hindered more, because he does not bring to its aid the best weapon he can use — self-mastery. If a man in his weakness persist here the over-use is apt to lead to both misuse and abuse. His bodily strength fails; through that the judgment is impaired; the vision blurs; the will grows unsteady, either weak or stubborn; and serious mistakes are made. Tired-out nerves lose the sense of proportion. Details look big and awesome. One’s strength and gifts are used as they were not meant to be.

And some catch fire from below, with the ignoble flames that belong lower down than the human level. They are caught by the fires of self-seeking. Self becomes and remains the horizon of the life. They have no eyes to see over the boundary lines of their own needs and lives. All the tides of life washing up and out are reckoned only as incoming tides beating ever on the shores of self. The self -fires send out some brilliant sparks and flashes, and warm some needy folks by their glow. But this is incidental; they are kindled and fed by th.e man primarily for himself. There is no sacrifice involved in the heat given out. It costs nothing. On the contrary, it only feeds the flames of self-praise. Misuse saps a life of the sweets of self-mastery.

And some are kindled with the fiercely burning fires of low passion that burn out hot and quick. Or, the highly colored flames of pleasure get control. The masterful man is controlled in everything by a high, strong purpose, never by pleasure. Pleasure comes, and is all the keener, and leaves no dregs, because not sought. True pleasure is the sweet fragrance of life brought out under the pressure of a strong purpose. It should never be an end in itself. It comes as a restful cushion to a man absorbed in his purpose.

Sometimes there is a smouldering or waiting of the soul-fires. The fire is there but has not yet broken out into flames. Then some event, simple in itself or perhaps great, is the whiff of fresh oxygen that brings the burst of flame. So it seems to have been with Jesus. With all reverence be it said that He seems to have first caught fire, as a boy, in Jerusalem. That visit to the holy city and temple was the match that ignited all the wondrous nature vrithin.

The man who catches fire sometimes lets that fire die down, and sometimes die out. That is always a tragedy. The man has had his vision. He has felt the upper pull upon his powers and responded to it, and then has yielded to the suction of lower things. The lapping waves of selfishness have been allowed to creep in and put the fire out. This is one of the sad and frequent tragedies of human life.

But some people never catch fire at all. They never wake up. Their powers lie sluggishly asleep while they drift slowly along with the moving tide made by others. They never feel the blessed contagion of the fire of God. Their powers lie wrapped up in closely folded napkincloths, under heavy clods, that never know pick or spade. A man never amounts to anything until he catches fire. Lack of use robs many men of self-mastery, and robs the needy world of their needed help.

Mastery means full use and full control; it does not mean repression, but full expression through control. It means control of the body, developed, and held to its true use; control of the mental powers developed fully and held steady to their true use; above all, control of spirit, the master of all, developed and reigning masterfully over all. The highest seems to yield last and hardest. Lack of control in the realm of one’s spirit seems the commonest of all weaknesses. It may crop out in the wild outburst of rage, or the sullen, silent rage yet more to be feared, with its tenacious memory and secret plottings.

Men strong in every other way often seem weak here. And in time the whole fabric is affected.

Nothing injures the body more than a fierce outburst of temper. And in time the body, tired-out or weakened through disease, is responsible for much lack of control on the higher levels. Greater is he that controlleth his spirit than he who can control everything else but cannot do this.

The Mastery oj Jesus.

That rarely masterful man Paul gives us a bit in one of his letters that is full of fascination here. He has been speaking of the fierce storms of passion that leave many a man badly shipwrecked. Then he passes quickly on to speak of the man who masterfully rides all storms, and brings his cargo safely in. The latter man has a pilot on board who is responsible for the glad result. But instead of a storm figure Paul uses a fruit figure. He says :^ “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faithfulness,” and then the climax is reached in ‘’self-control,” or self-mastery.

The eight traits named first are really an analysis of that named last. Each is a phase of self-mastery. Note them again. Self-mastery is the tender outgoing of the heart towards God and all men; this is the normal attitude of man unhurt by sin; anything less or different is abnormal. It is the deep glow of the heart-fires regardless of the dampening dews of outer circumstances;

1 Galatians =;: 22.

the quiet, steady stillness of spirit even when winds blow hard and storms beat fiercely; the patient enduring without time-limit of misunderstandings and all that hurts through them; the gracious bending of one’s strength to the needs of others; the being thoroughly, wholesomely good; the forgetting of one’s self in the absorbing thought of God and of man; and the full unflagging meeting of all that is due from us or needed from us.

This winsome picture of self-mastery is the result of the Spirit’s sway. This is a return to original conditions. The wondrous Spirit who created man’s home, and then man himself, comes down at Jesus’ bidding to live in us. He restores the original likeness blurred and rubbed out by sin. Here is the secret of self-mastery. A man never achieves it alone. Self is no match for self. It takes more than self to master self. This mastery is not by self; it is o] self by Another living within and working out His plans by our request and glad consent. He who in the early dawn of man’s life breathed into his nostrils the breath of life comes to rebreathe in us, and reproduce all of his original ideal. Man had broken with Him through sin. Now the break has been mended by Jesus, and the original likeness is restored by His Spirit within.

The habitual cultivation of the friendly mastery of Jesus draws out most the mastery of self and of circumstances. The keeping of the body pure and sound and under the thumb of the will: the keeping of the mind clear and quiet and alert and ever bending towards a keener discipline; the keeping of the social contacts simple and warm and cheeiy; the keeping of the spirit mggedly strong and softly gentle; the keeping of the heart pure in its loves and motives; the meeting of all difficulties and disappointments with the cheeriness which regards these as mere subways through to places farther up the road; and with all this, under and through, above and around all, a simxple, confiding trust in God that sings most when the subway lights all go out — this is the roadway to self-mastery.

It was trodden by Jesus when down here. It may be trodden by every man who yields to the mastery of ‘Jesus. There is no mastery without the Master. The same Holy Spirit who controlled Jesus’ human life has come down at Jesus’ request to control our lives. With Him alongside, in control, a man can climb the road up to the heights. Let us go along with Him.

The Commonness of Pain.

Sorts of Pain.

The Source of Pain.

Jesus and Pain.

The Mission of Pain.

Compensations.

Victory.