self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because
there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda
fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person
recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle
as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without
something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a
time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?

The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is
best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is
very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the
Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going
without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that
our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character.
The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on
sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate
temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save
that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of
fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food
as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the
mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the
child of God.

The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther
than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It
applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily
actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually
seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you
saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look
after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the
practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the
situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel
all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them
be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A
school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it
were permitte