The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1891-10-16
SELF DISCIPLINE.
Its Importance as an Aid to Success

Life.
True discipline is what we all need
to bring out the best that is in us
Only thus can any one experience the
meaning and the blessing of freedom,
for without it, though no hand may
direct him and no voice command him,
his own breast will be a scene of an
archy and tyranny, and he its powerless
victim. Perhaps no other power is
more important in the pursuit of the
various avocations of life. 1t enables a
man to submit patiently to whatever
preparation is necessary, to overcome
natural repugnances which would
hinder his career, to triumph over the
love of ease, or the craving for pleasure,
which would destroy his hopes of sue
cess. Many man with brilliant
talents and fine prospects has been
wrecked upon these unseen rocks. He
has trusted to his abilities. and they
have betrayed him, simply because they
were not well disciplined. The dry
details of his work weary him, its
drudgery he cannot bear, its enforced
regularity he despises. Presently, to
his surprise he is distanced in the race
by those of inferior powers, but who,
by perseverance and self-denial, have
used them to better purpose. Often
the authority of the mind is required to
make us leave off what is engrossing
us to the exclusion of other duties and
interests.
Much of the overworll that is so fire.
quently prostrating men of business
and professional life comes from the
lack of self-discipline. They know and
will admit that they are doing too much;
that they need rIst and relaXation: that
they are not giving what they owe to
their families or to society; but they
plead that they can not help it, which
simply means that they have not that
power of command over themselves
which would enable them to do what
they know to be right. A self-poised
man has the same control over the vari-
GUS faculties that the practiced must
elan has over the keys of his instru-
ment, while the undiscip. ined man
strikes at random, never knowing
whether harmony or discord may ensue.
Not only in the labor of our lives do we
need to preserve this authority over
self. In our hours of recreation. in our
association with our fellow men, in the
thousand details of life, it's con-
slant presence is necessary 1t
distinguishes the strong and no.
BILE character from the weak and
wavering one. 1t enables us to choose
no thn IL,
are constantly presenting themselves,
and to stem the tide, instead of drifting
helplessly down with the curre2t
Every one has an ideal of life, higher
than his actual life reaches We should
all like to be better, nobler, more Just
and generous and disinterested than we
are. Through self-diScipline alone can
we climb this ladder and approach this
ideal. 1t is by no chance metaphor
that we speak of ascending to the
higher life, or sinking to the lower.
The one implies determination. power,
effort; the other merely the absence of
all these, the letting go of the moral
reins, the abdication of authority over
self. For one man who resolves DELHI
erately and knowingly to tread the
downward path, there are thousands
WIN hiciClN Dim iilo IL iion uenIdl
and moral inertia. If we lose control
of our muscles, we fall to the earth; if
we lose control OF our mental faculties
we fall into idiocy: if we lose control of
our moral powers, we fall INTO evil
Weakness is the real slavery; strength
the real freedom. And this strength is
the Gver-growing result of self disci-
pine. Each one may gain it and hold it
for himSelf: for like every other
power, it grows by exercise. and no one
who seeks it in all earnestness will
seek in vain.-Philadelphia Ledger