hed but clothed upon. The fact that we are in
the world and have to fulfil its desired ends should carry with it
reverence for our manhood, and the demand for space to work out its
full equation. While the Apostle Paul was always ready to subject his
rights to the law of love, he was equally careful to assert that they
were his rights before he yielded them. In his care for the weak
brethren, he did not become a weak brother. One of the first things we
have to learn, is how to take wise care of ourselves; and then, step by
step, a true life is a growth in the knowledge of how so to take care
of ourselves as to promote the best interests of others. In this
matter of a right love of self, the point of transition at which it
passes into beneficence is the victory over a self-love which is
selfishness. It is really the basal principle of moral government in
the world.

But when this is said, the surest and simplest answer to the question,
What is it in ourselves we are to love? is to say--We are to love that
which God loves in us. And what does God love in us? From all we know
of the divine nature as revealed in Jesus Christ, we are surely right
in thinking that God loves in us what is most like Himself. No man can
stand at Calvary reverently and thoughtfully for five minutes without
being impressed with the truth of a wondrous self-sacrifice. I met
with a remark lately in a story I was reading which fastened itself on
my mind. It was made by a poor, toiling woman who had scarcely
sufficient means to keep body and soul together: "I never, somehow,"
she said, "seem to think a thing is mine until I have given it away."

This is the spirit that God loves, a spirit ever getting further away
from "miserable aims that end with self." God loves in us the
self-mastery that scorns to compromise with self-indulgence. God loves
in us that which cannot find its true home in the things seen and
temporal, but must ever soar out to the things unseen and eternal; the
things that live in and wait upon the earnest man and after which he
must ceaselessly aspire. God loves in us the strenuous effort which
proceeds from the conviction that there is sacred power in every life
which must not be wasted in "egotistical pride, or in a narrowing
self-love." From instinct, from the moral consciousness, from the
Scriptures--these we know to be representative of the things that God
loves. And we know we are right in loving in ourselves