ill not gather
a grain of corn the less that his mother is dead, while a boy will turn
from his books and his play and his dinner because his bird is dead: is
the ant, therefore, the stronger nature?"

"Is it not weak to be miserable?" said the doctor.

"Yes--without good cause," answered the curate. "But you do not know
what it would be to me to lose my faith in my God. My misery would be a
misery to which no assurance of immortality or of happiness could bring
any thing but tenfold misery--the conviction that I should never be good
myself, never have any thing to love absolutely, never be able to make
amends for the wrongs I had done. Call such a feeling selfish if you
will: I can not help it. I can not count one fit for existence to whom
such things would be no grief. The worthy existence must hunger after
good. The largest nature must have the mightiest hunger. Who calls a
man selfish because he is hungry? He is selfish if he broods on the
pleasures of eating, and would not go without his dinner for the sake of
another; but if he had no hunger, where would be the room for his
self-denial? Besides, in spiritual things, the only way to give them to
your neighbors is to hunger after them yourself. There each man is a
mouth to the body of the whole creation. It can not be selfishness to
hunger and thirst after righteousness, which righteousness is just your
duty to your God and your neighbor. If there be any selfishness in it,
the very answer to your prayer will destroy it."

"There you are again out of my region," said Faber. "But answer me one
thing: is it not weak to desire happiness?"

"Yes; if the happiness is poor and low," rejoined Wingfold. "But the man
who would choose even the grandeur of duty before the bliss of the
truth, must be a lover of himself. Such a man must be traveling the road
to death. If there be a God, truth must be joy. If there be not, truth
may be misery.--But, honestly, I know not one advanced Christian who
tries to obey for the hope of Heaven or the fear of hell. Such ideas
have long vanished from such a man. He loves God; he loves truth; he
loves his fellow, and knows he must love him more. You judge of
Christianity either by those who are not true representatives of it, and
are indeed, less of Christians than yourself; or by others who, being
intellectually inferior, perhaps even stupid, belie Christ with their
dull theories concerning Him. Yet the latter may have in them a noble
seed