Denunciations of selfishness are always in order, but its boundaries are not so easily defined. Self-love—the instinctive desire or tendency that leads one to seek to promote his own well-being, a due care for one’s own happiness, essential to high endeavor and perfectly compatible with justice, generosity, and benevolence—is a component part of our nature, and must be carefully safeguarded. To talk about its annihilation or eradication is to talk foolishness; and to attempt such eradication is to fly in the face of nature; that is, of God. The whole question, then, between selfishness and self-love is one of degree and adjustment and relative rights. No absolute hard-and-fast line can be drawn. One must use his best judgment, enlightened from all possible sources, as to what in any given case duty to self and duty to others demands. And that judgment he must follow, even when it materially differs from the opinion of those who may criticise his conduct. There is no virtue in wasting one’s self on impossible tasks. Self-sacrifice is never ethical if it be a willful spending of self to no purpose. One may do a serious wrong to himself, and confer no real good on any one else, by following the lead of generous, uncalculating, unthinking impulses. The exhortation never to think about one’s self is thoroughly mischievous, and can only lead to fanaticism and discouragement.
Self-control, not self-annihilation or extirpation, is the duty of the Christian. A man has perfect self-control when his highest powers hold the lower in subjection with perfect ease, and are themselves in complete harmony with the will of God. He is perfectly free from selfishness who gives to self only that degree of attention and care which is due, and in no way infringes on any of the rights of others. And he who is keenly desirous of doing this, bearing in mind his natural bias the wrong way, will deem it the safer course to go a little beyond what may seem the due limit. But it is not selfish to be manly, or to insist on being permitted to work out one’s calling according to the clear, conscious summons from on high. Self-will so much inveighed against is right, since it is a necessary component part of selfhood. Without self-will and self-consciousness there can be no self; in other words, we cease to be, and are non-existent. Masterfulness should be distinguished from willfulness; the former is not sinful, but a most desirable thing in this world where leadership is so essential to progress. A selfish will, one at any point divergent from the will of God, so far as we know or can ascertain, is always wrong. To tell where egoism ends and altruism begins in our relations with our fellow-men is far from easy; but it is ever blessed to become absorbed in a great cause, and supremely noble to have as the highest object in life the glory of God.
Some exceptions must be taken to a few other extreme statements of Fénelon, in which he follows other mistaken writers. The language of such teachers on humility is overstrained and really false, likely to do harm. Fénelon says, for example, “Those who are truly humble always take the lowest place, rejoicing when they are despised, and considering every one superior to themselves. We may judge of the advancement we have in humility by the delight we have in humiliation and contempt.” His motto was, “Ama nesciri”—Love to be unknown. Kempis wrote much of this same sort. And John Fletcher of Madeley was constantly offering up the prayer which we have in Charles Wesley’s couplet,
“Make me little and unknown,
Loved and prized by God alone.”
To desire to be despised, thought meanly of, accounted as naught, we can not recognize as a fruit of grace in a healthy mind rightly apprehensive of the vast importance to usefulness of a good reputation. To think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think is wrong, but so is it wrong to think of ourselves less highly than we ought. The truth above all things, facts at any cost whether to ourselves or other people, is the better attitude. No gain can come from falsity on the one side, any more than on the other. To delight unspeakably in the will of God, even when it involves contempt from those who misunderstand our position, is not the same as delighting in contempt itself. To insist on the lowest place when our recognized and lawful place is higher, would be neither wise nor edifying. Fénelon himself took his proper place as archbishop in the cathedral and palace and elsewhere, without diminution from his humility. He showed the latter in his hospital work, and in his familiar relations with those of lower rank.
A little too much is made in some places of the importance of silence. There is not sufficient recognition of the fact that some are in great danger of speaking too little, that there are idle silences as well as idle words. The stress laid upon listening to the interior voice is also carried somewhat beyond bounds, and needs counterbalancing by the warning that it is very easy to mistake the utterances of our own spirits for those of the Spirit of God, the products of a vain imagination for the products of Divine direction. Many have been sadly misled at this point. We need not perhaps specify other strained and unbalanced remarks. There are not many of them, and it would be unjust to make too much of them; but it is also unsafe to ignore them altogether. The letters are all the better in that they demand reflection from the reader, and are not to be taken up in a wooden way as though they were infallible. Properly perused, with prayer and meditation, they can not fail to be of immense service to the inquiring mind and the devotional spirit. There is nothing better as a stimulus to those with lofty aspirations seeking for guidance as to how best they may reach the heights.
A few extracts from the letters, all that our space permits, are furnished, that the reader’s appetite may be whetted for the feast to be found in larger volumes. And we can not better close this unpretentious, but we hope useful, little book than with some of the glowing paragraphs that have already done so much good in the world, and are destined to do so much more as the centuries roll:
Easy Ways of Divine Love.
Christian perfection is not that rigorous, tedious, cramping thing that many imagine. It demands only an entire surrender of everything to God, from the depths of the soul; and the moment this takes place, whatever is done for Him becomes easy. They who are God’s without reserve are in every state content; for they will only what He wills, and desire to do for Him whatever He desires them to do. They strip themselves of everything, and in this nakedness find all things a hundred-fold. Peace of conscience, liberty of spirit, the sweet abandonment of themselves and theirs into the hands of God, the joy of perceiving the light always increasing in their hearts, and, finally, the freedom of their souls from the bondage of the fears and desires of this world,—these things constitute that return of happiness which the true children of God receive a hundred-fold in the midst of their crosses while they remain faithful.