3.  It is unseemly for young persons to be foremost in speaking, in company, or to give advice with confidence in regard to anything which is to influence the conduct of their superiors in age, wisdom, or experience.  Elihu, although a man of superior knowledge and abilities, did not presume to speak to Job till his aged friends had ceased; for he said, “Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.”  Young persons sometimes render themselves ridiculous by such unseemly conduct.  The prophet Isaiah gives this as one of the marks of a degenerate age, that “the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.”

4.  Fierce contention about personal rights, is unseemly.  It begets a selfish, jealous spirit.  You never hear this where love reigns; for love is a yielding spirit.  The spirit that can never brook the least encroachment upon his rights, is an unseemly spirit, which will always be embroiled in some difficulty or other.

5.  All coarseness, grossness, or rudeness of character, is unseemly.  This negative description of one of the characteristics of charity is sufficiently comprehensive, if exhibited in all its details, to fill a volume.  It conveys the idea of an exquisite propriety of deportment, free from everything indelicate, obtrusive, repulsive, or unamiable.

VI.  Charity seeketh not her own.  It is not selfish.  The temper here described is inculcated in a beautiful manner in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians.  He exhorts them, in lowliness of mind, each to esteem other better than themselves; and not to look exclusively on their own things, but also on the things of others; and then commends to them the example of our Lord, who, though King of kings, humbled himself to the condition of a servant, enduring hardship, contumely, and an ignominious death, for our sakes.  This does not mean that we are not to love ourselves at all, nor be entirely regardless of our own interests; for the rule which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, recognizes the right of self-love; and the command, “Thou shalt not steal,” establishes the right of private property.  But it forbids us to make our own interest and happiness our chief concern, to the disregard of the rights of others and the general good; and requires us to make sacrifices of feeling and interest for the benefit of others, and even sometimes to prefer their happiness and interest to our own.  This is the spirit of genuine benevolence; and the exercise of it will impart far more elevated enjoyment than can be derived from private advantage.