Now, it is a certain fact, that in such inquiries as the present, our enemies may be of much more use to us than our friends. They may, they generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception. Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others bring against you in moments of anger and excitement; place yourself in the situation of the injured party, and ask yourself whether you would not attach tho blame of selfishness to similar conduct in another person. For instance, you may perhaps be seated in a comfortable chair by a comfortable fire, reading an interesting book, and a brother or sister comes in to request that you will help them in packing something, or writing something that must be finished at a certain time, and that cannot be done without your assistance: the interruption alone, at a critical part of the story, or in the middle of an abstruse and interesting argument, is enough to irritate your temper and to disqualify you for listening with an unprejudiced ear to the request that is made to you. You answer, probably, in a tone of irritation; you say that it is impossible, that the business ought to have been attended to earlier, and that they could then have concluded it without your assistance; or perhaps you rise and go with them, and execute the thing to be done in a most ungracious manner, with a pouting lip and a surly tone, insinuating, too, for days afterwards, how much you had been annoyed and inconvenienced. The case would have been different if a stranger had made the request of you, or a friend, or any one but a near and probably very dear relative. In the former case, there would have been, first, the excitement which always in some degree distinguishes social from mere family intercourse; there would have been the wish to keep up their good opinion of your character, which they may have been deluded into considering the very reverse of unselfish. Lastly, their thanks would of course be more warm than those which you are likely to receive from a relative, (who instinctively feels it to be your duty to help in the family labours,) and thus your vanity would have been sufficiently gratified to reconcile you to the trouble and interruption to which you had been exposed.
Still further, it is, perhaps, only to your own family that you would have indulged in that introductory irritation of which I have spoken. We have all witnessed cases in which inexcusable excitement has been displayed towards relatives or servants who have announced unpleasant interruptions, in the shape of an unwelcome visitor; while the moment afterwards the real offender has been greeted with an unclouded brow and a warm welcome, she not having the misfortune of being so closely connected with you as the innocent victim of your previous ill-temper.
I enter into these details, not because they are necessarily connected with selfishness, for many unselfish, generous-minded people are the unfortunate victims of ill-temper, to which vice the preceding traits of character more peculiarly belong; but for the purpose of showing you that your conduct towards strangers can be no test of your unselfishness. It is only in the more trying details of daily life that the existence of the vice or the virtue can be evidenced. It is, nevertheless, upon qualities so imperceptible to yourself as to require this close scrutiny that most of the happiness and comfort of domestic life depends.
You know the story of the watch that had been long out of order, and the cause of its irregularity not to be discovered. At length, one watchmaker, more ingenious than the rest, suggested that a magnet might, by some chance, have touched the mainspring. This was ascertained by experiment to have been the case; the casual and temporary neighbourhood of a magnet had deranged the whole complicated machinery: and on equally imperceptible, often undiscoverable, trifles does the healthy movement of the mainspring of domestic happiness depend. Observe, then, carefully, every irregularity in its motion, and exercise your ingenuity to discover the cause in good time; the derangement may otherwise soon become incurable, both by the strengthening of your own habits, and the dispositions towards you which they will impress on the minds of others.
Do let me entreat you, then, to watch yourself during the course of even this one day,—first, for the purpose of ascertaining whether my accusation of selfishness is or is not well founded, and afterwards, for the purpose of seeking to eradicate from your character every taint of so unlovely, and, for the credit of the sex, I may add, so unfeminine a failing.
Before we proceed further on this subject, I must attempt to lay down a definition of selfishness, lest you should suppose that I am so mistaken as to confound with the vice above named that self-love, which is at once an allowable instinct and a positive duty.
Selfishness, then, I consider as a perversion of the natural and divinely-impressed instinct of self-love. It is a desire for things which are not really good for us, followed by an endeavour to obtain those things to the injury of our neighbour.[41] Where a sacrifice which benefits your neighbour can inflict no real injury on yourself, it would be selfishness not to make the sacrifice. On the contrary, where either one or the other must suffer an equal injury, (equal in all points of view—in permanence, in powers of endurance, &c.,) self-love requires that you should here prefer yourself. You have no right to sacrifice your own health, your own happiness, or your own life, to preserve the health, or the life, or the happiness of another; for none of these things are your own: they are only entrusted to your stewardship, to be made the best use of for God's glory. Your health is given you that you may have the free disposal of all your mental and bodily powers to employ them in his service; your happiness, that you may have energy to diffuse peace and cheerfulness around you; your life, that you may "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." We read of fine sacrifices of the kind I deprecate in novels and romances: we may admire them in heathen story; but with such sacrifices the real Christian has no concern. He must not give away that which is not his own. "Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."[42]
In the case of a sacrifice of life—one which, of course, can very rarely occur,—the dangerous results of thus, as it were, taking events out of the hand of God cannot be always visible to our sight at present: we should, however, contemplate what they might possibly be. Let us, then, consider the injury that may result to the self-sacrificer, throughout the countless ages of eternity, from the loss of that working-time of hours, days, and years, wilfully flung from him for the uncertain benefit of another. Yes, uncertain, for the person may at that time have been in a state of greater meetness for heaven than he will ever again enjoy: there may be future fearful temptations, and consequent falling into sin, from which he would have been preserved if his death had taken place when the providence of God seemed to will it. Of course, none of us can, by the most wilful disobedience, dispose events in any way but exactly that which his hand and his counsel have determined before the foundation of the world;[43] but when we go out of the narrow path of duty, we attempt, as far as in us lies, to reverse his unchangeable decrees, and we "have our reward;" we mar our own welfare, and that of others, when we make any effort to take the providing for it out of the hands of the Omnipotent.
It is, however, only for the establishment of a principle that it could be necessary to discuss the duties involved in such rare emergencies. I shall therefore proceed without further delay to the more common sacrifices of which I have spoken, and explain to you what I mean by such sacrifices.
I have alluded to those of health and happiness. We have all known the first wilfully thrown away by needless attendance on such sick friends as would have been equally well taken care of had servants or hired nurses shared in the otherwise overpowering labour. Often is this labour found to incapacitate the nurse-tending friend for fulfilling towards the convalescent those offices in which no menial could supply her place —such as the cheering of the drooping spirit, the selection and patient perusal of amusing books, an animated, amusing companionship in their walks and drives, the humouring of their sick fancy—a sickness that often increases as that of the body decreases. For all these trying duties, during the often long and always painfully tedious period of convalescence, the nightly watcher of the sick-bed has, it is most likely, unfitted herself. The affection and devotion which were useless and unheeded during days and nights of stupor and delirium have probably by this time worn out the weak body which they have been exciting to efforts beyond its strength, so that it is now incapable of more useful demonstrations of attachment. Far be it from me to depreciate that fond, devoted watching of love, which is sometimes even a compensation to the invalid for the sufferings of sickness, at periods, too, when hired attendance could not be tolerated. Here woman's love and devotion are often brightly shown. The natural impulses of her heart lead her to trample under foot all consideration of personal danger, fatigue, or weakness, when the need of her loved ones demands her exertions.