mindedness, his alertness? If the young man Jesus were on your debating team, how do you think he would handle himself? What debating points can you learn from him?

4. Why do you believe he was popular socially with the Nazareth young folks? In what sort of games and social activities do you fancy he shared? Prove this from his habits later. Can you imagine him dancing the modern dances? Why do you suspect his ideals would not let him? 5. How naturally do you think the devotional nature of Jesus developed as a boy? Explain how religion refines the heart and the imagination. Why are these functions of the soul so important in building character?

6. Which side of your nature do you think is slow in developing? Ask the opinions of your three best friends on this matter and get their practical suggestions as to what you can do to build up your life more symmetrically.

FOR FURTHER STUDY AND HONOR WORK

7. Why is it easier to-day for us to live the four-square life than it was in Jesus' day? Compare our physical, mental, social, and spiritual privileges with his.

8. Ask five men or women you know well, all over fifty, what it was they lacked in youth to develop the allround manhood or womanhood. Then try to decide the order of importance of these four kinds of training, if you can.

9. Get a copy of the Y. M. C. A.'s splendid Handbook for Comrades, containing their new "Christian Citizenship Training Program." Read the first eighty pages and study the interesting program they have worked out for your use. By their tests, what special development do you need to make you symmetrical?

CHAPTER VIII

CHILDLIKENESS SHOULD NEVER BE OUT

GROWN

EVERYTHING that lives grows. It seems to be the law of life. The scrub oak, the dwarfed pine, the bantam hen, that stop growing too soon are rather grotesque. The idiot, growing to manhood with an infant's brain, is tragic. To be happy and useful in the world we must grow and develop into manhood or womanhood. We have seen how splendidly the boy Jesus rounded out his development of manliness in a fourfold way, on all sides of his nature. He sets us an example of symmetry in development which we do well to imitate.

As the boy develops manliness he outgrows many characteristics and traits of character, just as he outgrows his caps and shoes. They no longer fit him. They make him feel uncomfortable, and he casts them aside. Jesus, of course, realized this, yet he gave his disciples a strange bit of teaching, which no other great teacher seems to have thought about. He said to them: "Whatever you may outgrow and cast away, do not discard your childlikeness. That is something you should keep forever.”

Growing old too quickly.-Jesus criticized rather sharply his followers who had forgotten their childhood. They were disputing over their rank and their dignity (matters that never bother care-free children) and which should get the highest honors in Christ's kingdom. Their selfish ambition distressed him. Quickly he warned them:

Believe me, unless you change completely and become like children once more, you will not even get into my kingdom.-Matthew 18:3.

How it must have surprised those complacent men, who fancied themselves so much better and wiser than children, to hear this strange rebuke! They could not understand why Jesus was so partial to children. But Jesus had his own reasons. As he compared these prosy, eccentric, uninteresting grown-ups, each with his queer streaks and peculiarities, with the fresh, eager, unspoiled children who longed to make the youthful Jesus their comrade, he saw a distressing contrast.

What a pity it is, he thought, that so many folks are spoiled as they grow older! Why must they lose their zest for life, the fine enthusiasm so beautiful in youth? Why must they lose the ideals of goodness and unselfishness and purity which meant so much to them in younger days? And even some men who are good, in their way, have grown so odd, with such queer streaks, as peculiar as their freaky-looking faces! They are not comfortable to live with. What is the matter? Ah, they are gnarled and knotted characters. They grew old before their time. They have lost some of the finer traits which made them lovable and winsome when they were children. Peter, for instance, was a grizzled old fisherman, weatherbeaten, rough of speech, prematurely aged by daily toil and lacking in moral courage. He was needed in the coming kingdom as a leader; but he must change greatly before the King could use him. He must have new courage born within him. His character must be purified by suffering. His life must be stirred to its depths by a mighty loyalty and his heart warmed by the fire of a deathless love. It was a miracle the way Peter was changed after that. It must have been living with Jesus that did it, and the wonderful effect of the resurrection.

The Kingdom belongs to the childlike.-When Jesus said "No admittance except to the childlike," he

made very clear the kind of people he needed to help him make the World-that-is-to-be. If the kingdom of God is to be "a loving, intelligent family, organized around the Father's good will," then only those with childlike hearts can share the Father's home. They must be people who trust the heavenly Father with a childlike trust, and have teachable minds like children, to learn his will. They must have a boy's simple faith in God's goodness, and his instinctive dependence upon it. They must have an honest, trustworthy conscience, that has not been drowned out by the strident voices of a selfish world. They must not burn incense to Mammon, or worship the mere Things that are the idols of grown men. They must see the beauty in life which unspoiled children see, with the eyes of the pure in heart. Like them, they must feel the Spirit in all things, the loving, personal Spirit at the heart of life.

We must keep plastic. That is, we must always be teachable. "I still learn!" was the glad exclamation of the blind Michael Angelo, as his eager fingers found their way in the dark over the beautiful marble statue he was examining. The surest way to resist growing old is to keep the gray matter of the brain plastic and impressionable, as it is in childhood. Then, though the body may grow old, as the hair grows gray, the mind will stay youthful. This is always possible, as long as people read and study and keep up their interest in life and books. The brain thrives on exercise. By constant study the nerves of the brain are kept active, the blood circulates freely and keeps the gray matter healthy and young. But when people stop thinking, out of sheer laziness, they have begun to grow old. Their brains grow less plastic and they find it difficult to learn anything new. Two new ideas the same day tire them and they get sleepy!

This is why a certain bookkeeper lost his job, though he was only fifty and seemed in good health. For ten years he had read little and studied none. He had not kept up on new plans and methods in his own line of business. So when his corporation wished to install a new bookkeeping system, they had to replace him with a younger man whose brain was more plastic. The older man was "in the ruts." That is, the ruts of old habit were too deep in his mind and he had lost the power to learn new methods. When a person is no longer teachable he is of very little use in the world.

We must keep humble. Sometimes people are not teachable because they will not learn. They think they know it all already. Such people soon lose their friends, for no one likes an egotist. Humility is a beautiful part of the childlike character which Jesus warns us not to lose. The child is humble because he knows his inexperience. He feels the greater wisdom of his parents and knows his own ignorance. It ought to be true, and very often is, that the wiser we get the more we discover how much more there is to learn. This is why most great scholars are modest. They realize the great reaches of wisdom they have not yet mastered, and it keeps them humble. But when a scholar lacks humility and flatters himself upon his wisdom, it interferes with his progress in learning. He needs to keep childlike to enter the kingdom of truth. It is the complacent boy who thinks he knows the whole term's work, and so goes out to a movie that evening instead of reviewing the course, who fails in examination next day.

We must keep the childlike heart.-Trustfulness and loyalty are usually found in the heart of a child. They are equally beautiful in childlike people. A suspicious child is very unlovely, and such rare cases are