1. _Duties in Relation to Self_.--It is obvious that without (1) _respect_ for self there can be no respect for others. I am {207} a part of the moral whole, and an element in the kingdom of God. I cannot make myself of no account. Our Lord's commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,' makes a rightly conceived self-love the measure of love to one's neighbour. Self-respect involves (2) _self-preservation_, the care of health, the culture of body and mind. Not only is it our duty to see that the efficiency and fitness of the bodily organism is fully maintained, but we must also guard it against everything that would defile and disfigure it, or render it an instrument of sin. Christianity requires the strictest personal purity, purity of thought and feeling as well as of deed. It demands, therefore, constant vigilance, self-control, temperance, and even self-denial, so that the body may be, not, as the ancients thought, the prison-house of the soul, but the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christianity is, however, opposed to asceticism. Though Jesus denied Himself to the uttermost in obedience to the voice of God, there is in His presentation of life a complete absence of those austerities which in the history of the Church have been so often regarded as marks of superior sanctity.[17] It is unnecessary here to dwell upon athletics and sport which now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life which belongs to higher things.