Find Your Best and Higher Self

Find Your Best and Highest Self. BY NEPHI JENSON. Examination days, the times that try students' souls, are past. The pestering interrogation point, which for the last few days has been looking defiance at you from history, grammar and arithmetic papers, and disturbing your sleep by night, has lost its terror— at least for a season— and now you can lay you down to sleep blissfully, assured that the goblin question mark will not get you. You have had questions to left of you, questions to right of you, questions back of you, and questions in front of you, and boldly you have parsed, spelled, analyzed and conjugated, thought, stewed and ciphered, until you have successfully passed the valley of death, escaped the jaws of hell, and joyfully come to the scene of this commencement, surrounded by flowers and friends, Commencement! What thoughts this word calls up! Stand- ing here at the end of eight years of successful school work, spent with teachers of the highest proficiency, and in a building as per- fect as skill can make, bequeathed to you and to those who shall come after you, by a beneficent state, you cannot but feel grate- ful that you live in and form a part of that country which makes it possible in her schools for the "barefoot boy with cheek of tan" to sit beside the millionaire's son. Every cradl* asks, whence? Every commencement, whither? You are commencing today. Where are you going? What are you going to do? * An address to graduates of the Burton School, Salt Lake county.

1018 IMPROVEMENT ERA. While you are thinking about these questions, I commend to your consideration the parable of the talents. The man who received the one talent was a timid, slothful fellow. He neither had the courage nor the desire to find out the worth of the talent and use it, so he buried it in the earth. At the day of reckoning he said to his Lord, "I know that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown." The Lord rebuked the slothful ser- vant, and commanded that his one talent be taken from him and given to the man who had ten talents. The slothful servant's one talent was taken from him because he did not find out the worth and use of it. In this parable is suggested the whole duty of life, viz., to find your talents and use them — in other words, to find your life and give it away. Finding your life means to find your best and highest self, and to live it. To live one's best self means to see, to feel, to know the best that the purest and noblest have seen, felt and known. It means to see the sun rise and the sun set with the artist's eyes, to feel the thrill of music with the soul of a Mozart, and to know the depth of philosophy as it is known to a Socrates. It means to have the sense of justice that measures men, not by their names, fame or dollars, but by what they are and what they do. It means to have the greatness of soul to see nobility beneath rags, goodness beneath the skin of a sinner, and to recognize the truth of the poet's lines: Let me go where I will I hear a heaven-born music still. 'Tis not in the stars alone, Nor in the cups of budding flowers, Nor in the Redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers — But in the mud and scum of things, There is always, always something sings. When you have found your life, give it away. Give it freely. Give it in the song that rests the heart of the weary, and whis- pers peace to the turbulent soul. Give it in the thought set to the Muse's music, that thrills, inspires, uplifts and ennobles. Give it in unanswerable logic in Truth's defense, and Right's vindica- tion. Give it in that sympathy which grieves at the sight of

FIND YOUR BEST AND HIGHEST SELF. 1019 need, and sorrows when others are sad. Give it in that love which knoweth no self, but goeth about continually doing good. Give it to God in that devotion which recognized his laws as supreme. The greatest life which has been lived was a gift, and was spent in giving. The Man of Sorrows had no place to lay his head, yet in tears and blood he strove, prayed and sacrificed, to prepare a place of eternal glory for you, for me, and for all who have lived, and all who shall live. Whether at the altar, in the pulpit, or in the presence of tears that speak the broken heart, love was his only creed, sacrifice his only worship. He knew no self. For others he lived, for others he died. This was the perfect life. For he found his life and gave it away. Elder J. W. Bodily says that during the past winter months the Elders laboring in the West Washington confer- ence of the Northwestern States mission, at Tacoma, were suc- cessful in obtaining permission to speak in the largest mills in the West, and to hold meetings among the men. During the six months preceding May 18j one hundred and sixty-eight meetings were thus held, at which they distributed much lit- erature which they think will result in great good. They made many warm friends, and feel that they have a great field for good labor during the summer months. Elders in front row, left to right: 0. P. Dunn, Bert Roper. Back row: 0. L. Wheeler, J. W. Bodily.