st
possible number.

Do we indeed? I should have thought that unbridled selfishness, and the
internecine struggle of opposing interests, had already reduced many
nations, and seemed likely to reduce all mankind, if it went on, to that
state of the greatest possible misery of the greatest number, from which
our blessed Lord, as in this very week, died to deliver us. At all
events, if that is to be the condition of man, and of society, then man
is not made in the likeness of God, and has no need to be led by the
Spirit of God. For what the likeness of God and the Spirit of God are,
Passion-week tells us--namely, Love which knows no self-interest; Love
which cares not for itself; Love which throws its own life away, that it
may save those who have hated it, rebelled against it, put it to a
felon's death.

My good friends, instead of believing the carnal and selfish philosophy
which cries, Every man for himself--I will not finish the proverb in this
Holy place, awfully and literally true as the latter half of it
is--instead of believing that, believe the message of Passion-week, which
speaks rather thus: telling us that not selfishness, but unselfishness,
mutual help and usefulness, is the law and will of God; and that
therefore the whole universe, and all that God has made, is very good.
And what does Passion-week say to men?

"Could we but crush that ever-craving lust
For bliss, which kills all bliss; and lose our life,
Our barren unit life, to find again
A thousand lives in those for whom we die:
So were we men and women, and should hold
Our rightful place in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,
Nought lives for self. All, all, from crown to footstool.
The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain;
The angels, ministers to God's elect;
The sun, who only shines to light a world;
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers;
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content;
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe;
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower;
The flower which breeds a thousand velvet worms,
Born only to be prey to every bird--
All spend themselves on others; and shall man,
Whose twofold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth and heaven--doubly bound,
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their lives