swears once in a
while and a saint who makes every one swear all the while._

_You cannot lift folks while you are looking down on them._

III

SELF AND SERVICE

There is such a thing as supremely selfish self-denial. A man retires
into the monk's pietic seclusion; he isolates himself from interest in
the world battles; he shuts himself from sympathy with the struggles of
business, civil, and even social life. To him these things are carnal.
He is engrossed with the complication of interpretations of languages
long dead, or with visions of an unknown heaven, and this, he thinks,
is living the life of self-denial.

The denial of self is not the death of self; it is the leading of the
best self into larger life. It is not the dwarfing of the life; it is
its development into usefulness. It is not the emasculation of
character; it is the submission and discipline of the life to new and
nobler motives.

He best denies himself who best develops himself with the purpose of
serving his fellows. What Jesus meant was that if any man would be one
of His he must cease to make his own selfish pleasures, ambitions, and
passions the end of his living; he must make the most of himself that
he might have the more to give to the service of mankind; he must make
the one motive and end of his life the benefit and help of every other
man.

That kind of a life means a change of centre. Instead of regarding the
universe as revolving about itself it sees that self as but part of the
great machinery of life, planned and operating for the good of all. A
man begins to deny himself as soon as he begins to love another. Even
a yellow dog may act to deflect the heart from its old self-centre.
The love of kin and family, of friends, and associates all serve to
strengthen the habit of self-denial.

The fewer people a man takes into his plan of life the more likely is
he to be selfish. But some lives are but the more selfish because they
take in all mankind and look on them as designed to contribute to their
single enriching. That kind of a life commits suicide; ever grasping
and never giving it dies of plethora. It had never learned that
strange secret of the best self-development, sacrificing service.

We need to guard ourselves against the delusion that the denial of
oneself means the impoverishment of the life. There can be no true
giving of the life in service unless there is a wise enriching of the
self, a thorough fitti