[Swlugevents] stemmer

[Kotyk Fuertes]

Heir standard higher; to live 


Ly to the first temptation. And, because those higher feelings, which are the great check to selfishness, have not yet arisen within him, the selfish instinct, connected apparently with all animal life, is exceedingly predominant in him. If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he is at the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore extremely selfish. It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the slave of present impulses. A child is not apt to look backwards or forwards, to reflect or to calculate. In this also he differs entirely from the great quality which befits man as an eternal being, the being able to look before and after. Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we may be content with these four characteristics of childhood, teachableness, ignorance, selfishness, and living only for the present. In the last three of these, the perfect man should put away childish things; in the first point, or teachableness, while he retained it in principle, he should modify it in its application. For while modesty, humility, and a readiness to learn, are becoming to men no less than to children; yet it should be not a simple readiness to follow others, but only to follow the wise and good; not a sense of utter helplessness which catches at the first stay, whether sound or brittle; but such a consciousness of weakness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened by Him who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all pure. I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change from childhood to manhood is gradual; there is a period in our lives, of several years, in which we are, or should be, slowly exchanging the qualities of one state for those of the other. During this intermediate state, then, we should expect to find persons become less teachable, less ignorant, less selfish, less thoughtless. "Less teachable," I would wish to mean, in the sense of being "less indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil and the good are, in human things, ever mixed up together, we may be obliged to mean "less teachable" simply. And, to say the very truth, if I saw in a young man th
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