study and
reading for those who have the energy to pursue them. You will have no
excuse at any period of your life for failure to progress and improve
intellectually, except your own inability to compel yourself to make
use of the opportunities that lie all around you.

It is hardly necessary for me to remind you of what you know so well,
that in reading you should choose only the best books. We may without
harm divert the mind for a little each day by light miscellaneous
reading, but young people especially need to be warned against
indiscriminate novel or story reading. Here again the virtue of
self-control comes in to help do the right and avoid the wrong. If you
discover that your taste is more for the improbable highly-wrought pages
of fiction than for such works as are known to everyone as standard and
improving, let it be a sign to you that you should summon your
self-control and compel yourself to a different sort of reading. If you
find that you cannot relish or fix your mind upon standard works of
history biography, travel, or any of the many excellent books written
to bring scientific knowledge within the comprehension of the general
reader, then you may conclude rightly that your mind is in a very
uncultivated state.

Your own efforts and determination--in other words, your power of
self-control--alone can effect anything worthy in self-culture. To
attain the power of self-control in a high degree is one of the greatest
and most important aims we can set before us in life. I do not believe
it can ever be attained in our own strength. To rightly control temper
and speech and conduct requires help from the divine Spirit which is
always around and over us, and within us, if we will but let our hearts
be receptive to its influences. The greatest possible help to
self-control is to learn in the moment of temptation to lift the heart
to God in earnest aspiration for His help and guidance. A sense of the
presence of God is always a strength, and help when we are conscious of
earnest effort to do right. The Bible says: "It is God that worketh in
you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." It is one of the great
mysteries and yet one of the most evident truths of life, that we must
work ourselves, and that God works in and with us, to accomplish any
good thing. That you may know and realize this truth, and learn to find
for yourself the comfort and support and strength of soul that comes
from seeking after G