ng it better. Envy them not.
Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line
as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little
Christian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That
most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's
soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we
are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly
needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which
"envieth not."
And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this
further thing, humility--to put a seal upon your lips and forget what
you have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth
into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade
again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love
waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up."
The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this _summum
bonum_: Courtesy. This is love in society, love in relation to
etiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been
defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little
things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love can not
behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into
the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their
hearts, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply can not
do it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer
gentleman in Europe than the plowman-poet. It was because he loved
everything--the mouse, the daisy, and all the things, great and small,
that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with
any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on
the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It
means a gentle man--a man who does things gently with love. And that
is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man can not in the
nature of things do an ungentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle
soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature can not do anything
else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not even
that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and
rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise
even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does n
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