B-P's Blog - Faith, Hope, and Love

During his lifetime Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the worldwide Scouting movement, wrote many books and articles directed to Scouters. Each Sunday I’ll publish a selection from his writings in the hope that you’ll draw inspiration and understanding from his timeless ideas. IT has been said that youth is fortified by hope and old age is soothed by content.

Youth looks forward with hope, old age looks round with content, and some day, when I grow old, I am going to look round with great content. In the meantime you who are not over eighty-one must go on with the work you are doing; there couldn’t be better work, and you will be earning your old-age pension of content when you will be able to look back with satisfaction on having done a work that was worth while. And to the younger ones I say press forward with Hope; mix it with optimism and temper it with the sense of humor which enables you to face difficulties with a sense of proportion.

Press forward with a Faith in the soundness of the Movement and its future possibilities, and press forward with Love which is the most powerful agent of all. That spirit of love is, after all, the spirit of God working within you.

Remember, “Now abideth Faith, and Hope, and Love– these three. But the greatest of these is Love.”

Carry on in that spirit and you cannot fail.

December , 1937.