FOR FURTHER STUDY AND HONOR WORK

5. Study Jesus' teachings in Luke 9: 46-, Matthew 20: 20-, Luke 22: 24-, Luke 18: 14, until you understand and can explain in writing his deep dislike of personal pride and self-importance. Is his statement true that the one who puts himself forward is usually humbled? 6. Learn what you can about the career of Vice-President Coolidge. Discover his unusual modesty, self-depreciation, simple humility, and habit of silence. Did these traits of character have anything to do with the rise of this quiet, unassuming man to high position?

7. Watch a few noisy people in your town who seem to be trying to become great on pure arrogance and bluff. Get the opinions of three trustworthy friends of yours as to their claim to honor. Make up your mind whether there is any real substitute for the humility which Jesus taught and illustrated.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN HEROISM

In discussing the practical tests of character we have found many points in which the ordinary selfish life differs from the life that is really Christian. Jesus' ideals of living are high above the common dead-level of life— there's no denying it. In chapter after chapter we have listened to the teaching of the Master on the problem we were discussing, and he has challenged the best that is in us every time. It is surprising how revolutionary his ideals are, and how contrary to the world's loose, smug, and rather vulgar standards. After climbing rung after rung of his ladder of nobler living, we have come to the severest test of all, the climax of Christian heroism. It is too dizzy a climb for any but the stout-hearted. Christ dares you to make it. Will you take his dare?

What stuff are you made of?—In a public school of a hundred boys and girls from all sorts of homes we find all kinds of raw material. How many of the group have the making of heroes, do you suppose? Probably not a large number. They might all go to a movie, watch a thrilling six-reel drama, applaud every noble act of the hero, and even hiss at the villain! But when it comes to living like the hero, that's different. It takes heroic stuff for God to make a hero out of.

Have you been wondering, as you have studied these lessons about service and sacrifice, whether you could ever live up to such high ideals? You have caught the vision of a noble life, and perhaps of leadership in service,

at least of real usefulness. Your ambition is stirred by the vision. Now, have you the moral fiber to make the vision real and to fulfill your new ambition, or are you the sort of youth that merely dreams of heroism—and takes it out in dreaming? Are you the soft, self-indulgent kind, dependent upon cheap amusements for happiness, whose self-control is weakened by cigarettes, and whose backbone is more like spaghetti than finely tempered steel? Are your impulses your master or are you master of yourself? Are you a drifter, at the mercy of the social current, or have you the moral independence to do your own thinking, to steer your own craft and live your own life, in spite of ridicule, sarcasm, and subtle persecution? If this last is true of you, then you are made of the stuff to take the dare of Christ's ninth beatitude. Don't expect the impossible of yourself now. But remember every hero was once as doubtful and uncertain of himself as one sometimes is at sixteen or seventeen. He may finally have done the impossible, but he got a good ready for it at first. Give yourself time.

Heroism the climax of Jesus' Beatitudes.—We discovered early in our course, in Chapter IV, that Jesus reckoned heroism high. Strangely enough, he not only honored it supremely among the virtues but he placed it highest in his scale of happiness. He counted no joy higher than that of the persecuted prophets. His superlative degree of happiness was the joy of the martyr, the joy of the cross! He says nothing about the joy of a tencourse fraternity banquet, or an all-night dance, or a tenth-inning baseball victory over high school rivals. The joys of wholesome sports and out-of-door life, the happiness of all normal living, he would be the last to deny; but heroism, he says, is in a class by itself. Anyone who wishes to scale the heights of human blessedness must

learn to be a hero, and discover how to live for a great cause and to sacrifice for others.

The folly of wasted sacrifice.-When Esau, the foolish victim of appetite, sold his birthright for a "mess of pottage," he got at least his savory soup; while the bad bargain cost Jacob his self-respect, his brother's love, and fourteen years of exile. Both brothers played the fool. It is bad enough to suffer from our bad decisions, but how foolish it is for a person to waste high motives! There is no value in making a sacrifice just for its own sake; there must be a noble cause, or our sacrifice is a needless selfdenial.

Do you know a mother foolish enough to be her children's slave? Her love for that pretty daughter is excessive in its sacrifice. Is she doing the girl any real kindness in shielding her from work and everything else that is hard? The mother slaves in the kitchen alone that the daughter may play the piano and entertain her friends. She never teaches the child to cook or to sew, in the fond hope that she may never have to. The mother makes herself a lonely drudge, in her self-denying treatment of her daughter; but it is all a foolish sacrifice, worse than useless. It would be far better for both if the daughter should share her mother's work and learn the household arts which she will some day need to know.

The soldiers in the vast army of Kaiser Wilhelm made great sacrifices, and they did it with a devotion that was almost religious; but, though most of them knew it not, it was wasted in a bad cause. Like the loyal soldiers of Napoleon, they were wasting their sacrifice in the unworthy cause of a would-be world conqueror. The soldiers who wore the gray in our Civil War showed real heroism, but their devotion was wasted in a mistaken cause. Their loyalty to their native state was a very

noble sentiment, but it blinded them to the fact that incidentally they were fighting to defend the evil system of human slavery. The children's crusade was the strangest and possibly the most foolish movement in all history. The devotion of those misguided children was a tragic waste of self-sacrifice in a hopeless, useless cause. Even if they had done the impossible and had captured the abandoned tomb of Christ from the Turks, would their sacrifice have helped in the least to make a better world?

The test of Christian heroism.-Self-sacrifice is not really Christian heroism unless it is necessary to the cause of Christ and humanity. We must be sure it is God's will. Notice how Jesus himself was greatly perplexed and troubled the night before his crucifixion. He saw the coming shadow of the cross. His enemies were closing in around him, determined to take his life. He was willing to die for his cause, if it would really help his cause; but he did not wish to waste his life in useless sacrifice. So he prayed half the night in the garden of Gethsemane to find out if it were really God's will for him to make the great sacrifice:

O my Father, if it be possible, let me escape this cup of suffering; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. . . . Thy will be done.-Matthew 26: 39, 42.

Then when he was sure it was God's will, he died willingly and gloriously, and he did not die in vain. His costly sacrifice made his death more powerful than his life. He died to make us good. His costly death shocked the world into feeling the awfulness of sin and the power of infinite love. His cross has challenged us all to noble, heroic living, instead of passing our days in useless ease.