ess of Personality, the Brotherhood of Man, and the
Fatherhood of God--and all that is essential in the claim of the
'Natural Rights of Man' is implicitly contained. The one thing needful
is that men become alive to their privileges and go forward to 'possess
their possessions.'

II

SPHERES OF DUTY

We are thus led to a division, natural if not wholly logical, of duties
which spring from these rights--duties towards self, others, and God.
Though, indeed, self-love implies love of others, and all duty is duty
to God, still it may be permissible to frame a scheme of duties
according as one or other element is prominent in each case.

1. _Duties in Relation to Self_.--It is obvious that without (1)
_respect_ for self there can be no respect for others. I am {207} a
part of the moral whole, and an element in the kingdom of God. I
cannot make myself of no account. Our Lord's commandment, 'Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself,' makes a rightly conceived self-love the
measure of love to one's neighbour. Self-respect involves (2)
_self-preservation_, the care of health, the culture of body and mind.
Not only is it our duty to see that the efficiency and fitness of the
bodily organism is fully maintained, but we must also guard it against
everything that would defile and disfigure it, or render it an
instrument of sin. Christianity requires the strictest personal
purity, purity of thought and feeling as well as of deed. It demands,
therefore, constant vigilance, self-control, temperance, and even
self-denial, so that the body may be, not, as the ancients thought, the
prison-house of the soul, but the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity is, however, opposed to asceticism. Though Jesus denied
Himself to the uttermost in obedience to the voice of God, there is in
His presentation of life a complete absence of those austerities which
in the history of the Church have been so often regarded as marks of
superior sanctity.[17] It is unnecessary here to dwell upon athletics
and sport which now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our
land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily
fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead
of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life which
belongs to higher things.

(3) Self-maintenance involves also the duty of _self-development_, and
that not merely of our physical, but also of our mental life. If