YOURSELF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21668, 11 June 1932, Page 19

YOURSELF

Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. D. Gardner Miller. At odd intervals lately I have been browsing through a most interesting book. There are some books that best reveal themselves as you casually pick them up to read, cither between tasks or at the close of the .day, when you can honestly claim a little relaxation. This particular book is of that type. It is called “ Our Attitude to Self/’ and is' written by the Rev. W. Mackintosh Mac Kay, D.D.,,0f Glasgow, and; published by, Hodder and Stoughton/ . Dr Mac Kay has many books -to his credit, and this, the latest, will be eagerly welcomed by his great host of readers. Now it is really always interesting to talk about yourself. Lots of people do nothing else. They are the people we call bores. BuXj I do not mean that it is interesting to talk about ourselves, our exploits and feelings, etc., to the exclusion of everything else. Rather 1 mean that to talk about ourselves with the purpose of finding out more of the great powers that go to make up our personalities is interesting beyond measure. It is also revealing and humiliating and—if we will have it, edifying. It is in that sense that Dr MacKaylg book is very much.worth while. He speaks interestingly and searchingly about self-control, self-reliance, self-de-nial, selfishness, self-pity, etc. Now these are all vital to us. “Know thyself” is one of life’s imperatives.

There was one thing that Jesus insisted upon, and that was that no man should ever take himself cheaply. To Jesus, man was God’s handiwork, and the soul of man, worth more than all the heaped-up wealth of the world. Dr Mac Kay brings this out in his chapter on “ Self-reverence.” Now self-reverence is the offspring of self-respect. To respect yourself is the greatest deterrent to the insidious appeal to sell yourself to glamorous sin. “My head is blgody but unbowed,” said Henley. Commenting on that phrase, J. M. Barrie remarked that it could be changed to “My head is bloody but bowed.” That would be no disadvantage for it would mean that while the bludgeonings of fate are merciless, yet the bowed head, the attitude of prayer, betokens the mastery of fate, not its slave. Whatever happens to you, your soul is your own. Respect yourself, reverence the divine spark within yourself and you will never be conquered. I was deeply moved in reading a quotation from a book of my childhood days, which I must look through again one day soon. It is that scene in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” where poor Tom is being thrashed and kicked bv his brutal master. Here, ye rascal,” he says to him, “ain’t I yer master? Did ye never-read in yer Bible, ‘ Servants, obey yer masters’? Didn’t I pay 1200 dollars for all that is in yer old black shell? Ain’t ye mine, body and soul, mine?” giving him another kick as he said the words. In the depths of bodily suffering, bowed down by brutal oppression, that word “ soul ” shot a gleam of triumph through Tom’s mind. He suddenly straightened himself up, and, looking to heaven; while the blood and tears that flowed down his face mingled, exclaimed:, “No, massa! No. My soul ain’t yours. Ye haven’t bought it. Ye can’t buy it. It ! s been bought and paid for by One that’s able to keep it. No matter; no matter! Ye can’t buy my soul.” Call no man master, save Christ, and there will come to; you a self-respect and a self-reverence that will enable and dignify your life, no matter how lowly your station may be.

Still thinking about this “ self ” of ours you will agree with me ■ when _ I say that where most of us slip_ is .in the matter of sell-control. And in this connection it is wise to remember that the passions of temper, spite, arid the rest of the unholy brood that lash us until .we do the most stupid things, really arise from this fact that the “ self ” has, for the time being, become lawless. An act is never really spontaneous, - We often say:, ‘ I did it without thinking.” That, strictly speaking, is not true. We may do something so°suddcnly that we imagine .it had no. previous connection with a thought in the mind. . Every act is a result. Something happened in the “self” that gave rise to the act. And it is those sudden onslaughts of passion and temptation that fired the “self” off guard. This is not a study in psychology for psychologists, and so the ordinary/ reader will catch and understand my meaning when I say that without self-control our thoughts and actions can make a hell of our lives. And how can we control this self of ours? Only when it is mastered by a. Higher Self. That is psychologically as well as spiritually true —and I would hesitate to attempt to say where one ends and the other begins. Now, it is just at this poijit that Christianity towers above any other religion. The control oi the self by a Higher Self—-that is, the grip of God upon our Uvea —floes not subjugate and enslave the “self”; it liberates it. That seems paradoxical; it is also true. Self-con-trol comes through surrender ’ to a higher control. We do not lose our individuality when we hecom.e the/"bondservants of Christ; our individuality is enhanced, and /we become increasingly “aware” of ourselves. “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control form a trinity which finds its uflity at that point'where the 1 individual “self” can truly say: “I live, yet not I; Christ liveth in me.”