You have a chance in church service and Sunday School to show your reverence for all these sacred things and to be all that makes you very knightly. An irreverent boy or girl, who does not care, or who makes a mock at holy things, will never get very high; or if he does, will some day topple down, sure as fate.
"S" stands for self-control, and that means able to use yourself and to use your temper.
It means you are sitting on the wagon-seat doing the driving and not running between the shafts while something drives you. It means you are the engineer in the cab, with your hand on the lever, and if you can't be that, your life train will run away with you and then smash goes everything!
Out in the Rockies they used to have safety switches on the heavy grades so that if a train got away it would run into the switch and up-hill and stop. But a good, strong engineer, with a strong hand on the lever, usually does the work. Self-control means you are in charge and are keeping your lever well in hand.
You know, girls and boys, we are like gunpowder. We fire off easily. We have so many nerves and are so high-strung; and if we were not that, we would never do anything.
Appetites and passions do things and give us all life force, but they have to be held in, like a splendid horse kept under bit and bridle.
Out in California there is a shell called the Abalone. It attaches itself to the rock by a very strong muscle that holds so tight it has to be pried open often with a crowbar. When it is all cleaned up it is wondrously beautiful in varied colours of green and pink and opalescent pearl.
One day a little child was walking on the beach and stepped on an open shell, when quick as a flash it closed and held her there. They suppose she called out in terror, but no one heard, and the tide rose and covered her, and the body swaying at last, broke off and all they found was a boot, with bones, in the heart of the shell.
They tell of some fishermen going out to gather Abalone shells. One, in a hurry, reached out to pull it off the rock, when it closed on him and held him as in a vise, and the rising tide gradually drew him out of the boat and drowned him. You see, instead of possessing the shell it possessed him.
Lose self-control and you become possessed by something. Keep self-control and you are master.