re gain--what is this but selfishness
extended out of this world into eternity? "Not worldliness," indeed, as
a satirist once said with bitter truth, "but other-worldliness."

Moreover--and the young and the enthusiastic should also bear this in
mind--though heroism means the going beyond the limits of strict duty, it
never means the going out of the path of strict duty. If it is your duty
to go to London, go thither: you may go as much further as you choose
after that. But you must go to London first. Do your duty first; it
will be time after that to talk of being heroic.

And therefore one must seriously warn the young, lest they mistake for
heroism and self-sacrifice what is merely pride and self-will, discontent
with the relations by which God has bound them, and the circumstances
which God has appointed for them. I have known girls think they were
doing a fine thing by leaving uncongenial parents or disagreeable
sisters, and cutting out for themselves, as they fancied, a more useful
and elevated line of life than that of mere home duties; while, after
all, poor things, they were only saying, with the Pharisees of old,
"Corban, it is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;"
and in the name of God, neglecting the command of God to honour their
father and mother.

There are men, too, who will neglect their households and leave their
children unprovided for, and even uneducated, while they are spending
their money on philanthropic or religious hobbies of their own. It is
ill to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs; or even to the
angels. It is ill, I say, trying to make God presents, before we have
tried to pay God our debts. The first duty of every man is to the wife
whom he has married, and to the children whom she has brought into the
world; and to neglect them is not heroism, but self-conceit; the conceit
that a man is so necessary to Almighty God, that God will actually allow
him to do wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable
services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye;
every motive which springs from self; is by its very essence unheroic,
let it look as gaudy or as beneficent as it may.

But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love of approbation--the
desire for the love and respect of our fellow-men.

That must not be excluded from the list of heroic motives. I know that
it is, or may be proved to be, by victorious an