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Page 26
Trifles make the sum of human things,[45]
and are sure to occur every day, and to form the character into such
habits as will fit or unfit it for great proofs of unselfishness, should
such be ever called for. Besides, it is on trifles such as these that
the smoothness of "the current of domestic joy" depends. It is a
smoothness that is easily disturbed: do not let your hand be the one to
do it.
In all the trifling instances of selfishness above enumerated, I have
generally supposed that a request has been made to you, and that you
have not the trouble of finding out the exact manner in which you can
conquer selfishness for the advantage of your neighbour. I must now,
however, remind you that one of the penalties incurred by past
indulgence in selfishness is this, that those who love you will not
continue to make those requests which you have been in the habit of
refusing, or, if you ever complied with them, of reminding the obliged
person, from time to time, how much serious inconvenience your
compliance has subjected you to. This, I fear, may have been your habit;
for selfish people exaggerate so much every "little" (by "the good man")
"nameless, unremembered act," that they never consider them gratefully
enough impressed on the heart of the receiver without frequent reminders
from themselves. If such has been the case, you must not expect the
frank, confiding request, the entire trust in your willingness to make
any not unreasonable sacrifice, with which the unselfish are gratified
and rewarded, and for which perhaps you often envy them, though you
would not take the trouble to deserve the same confidence yourself. Even
should you now begin the attempt, and begin it in all earnestness, it
will take some time to establish your new character. _En attendant_, you
must be on the watch for opportunities of obliging others, for they will
not be freely offered to you; you must now exercise your own
observation to find out what they would once have frankly told
you,--whether you are tiring people physically or distressing them
morally, or putting them to practical inconvenience. I do not make the
extravagant supposition that all those with whom you associate have
attained to Christian perfection; the proud and the resentful, as well
as the delicate-minded, will suffer much rather than repeat appeals to
your unselfishness which have often before been disregarded. They may
exercise the Christian duty of forgiveness in other ways, but this is
the most difficult of all. Few can attain to it, and you must not hope
it.
Finally; I wish to warn you against believing those who tell you that
such minute analysis of motives, such scrutiny into the smallest details
of daily conduct, has a tendency to produce an unhealthy
self-consciousness. This might, indeed, be true, if the original state
of your nature, before the examination began, were a healthy one. "If
Adam had always remained in Paradise, there would have been no anatomy
and no metaphysics:" as it is not so, we require both. Sin has entered
the world, and death by sin; and therefore it is that both soul and body
require a care and a minute watchfulness that cannot, in the present
state of things, originate either disease or sin. They have both existed
before.
No one ever became or can become selfish by a prayerful examination into
the fact of being so or not. In matters of mere feeling, it is indeed
dangerous to scrutinize too narrowly the degree and the nature of our
emotions. We have no standard by which to try them. If a medical man
cannot be trusted to ascertain correctly the state of his own pulse,
how much more difficult is it for the amateur to sit in judgment on the
strength and number of the pulsations of his own heart and mind.
The case is quite different when feelings manifest themselves in overt
acts: then they become of a nature requiring and susceptible of minute
analyzation. This is the self-scrutiny I recommend to you.
May you be led to seek earnestly for help from above to overcome the
hydra of selfishness, and may you be encouraged, by that freely offered
help, to exert your own energies to the utmost!
Let me urge on your especial attention the following verses from the
Bible on the subjects which we have been considering. If you selected
each one of these for a week's _practice_, making it at once a question,
a warning, and a direction, it would be a tangible, so to speak, use of
the Holy Scriptures, that has been found profitable to many:--
"We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and
not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for
his good to edification. Even Christ pleased not himself."[46]
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