IMPORTANCE OF SKLF-KNOWLVDGE.

Evening Post, Issue 128, 1 June 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

IMPORTANCE OF SKLF-KNOW-LVDGE.

Try to gain some real knowledge of yourself. Begin with your disposition. Why are you so touchy, co easily mortified and discouraged ? Is it because self-pride is uppermost in you, or because envy and jnjilousy are strongest in jour heart? This is worth finding out, for until you know yourself about those things, j'ou will alwa3's be mistaking ugly phantoms of your own creating for realities round about you. On the other hand, are you conscious of any gift of power ? Are thero some things to which you naturally take ? What has become of these? You have begun many of them well, but have you finished them? Is there any completeness about your work ? Are you weak or strong in the sense of duty ? Can you be depended on, or do you find yourself habitually chooMng the pleasant tasks, but shirking the others ? Know yourself, take stock of the tools with which you must do your work — they are not f-xactly the same with you as they aie with any other. In the heart of everyone of us there will U; much is o shall never know till teniytatiou, or trial, or opportunity brings it to light, but, all the same, the more we loam what can be known, the better it will be with us to tho end. No one can set himself to this inward search in earnestness without discovering that he has some " bent." This is the divine indication of the direction in which his powers shall find their most effective play. But who ever does find at the outset the very sphere most suited to his bent ? Very few ; most men drift into it. Beginning anywhere, anyhow, as the pf ovidence of the time gives them an opening, they yet, with instinctive selection, grope their way in the direction of their true bent, till they find it. So the lad who began as a shoemaker becomes the prince of preachers, the printer's apprentice becomes the first of missionaries, the journeyman shipwright becomes the ironworker employing thousands, and the clerk becomes a soldier to save an empire for us. These only express in capital letters the truth that in smaller type is every day being made plaiu — that he who has faith and is true to hia bent will at last fiud the right outlet for it. — The Young Man.