obtain
those things to the injury of our neighbour.[41] Where a sacrifice which
benefits your neighbour can inflict no _real_ injury on yourself, it
would be selfishness not to make the sacrifice. On the contrary, where
either one or the other must suffer an equal injury, (equal in all
points of view--in permanence, in powers of endurance, &c.,) self-love
requires that you should here prefer yourself. You have no right to
sacrifice your own health, your own happiness, or your own life, to
preserve the health, or the life, or the happiness of another; for none
of these things are your own: they are only entrusted to your
stewardship, to be made the best use of for God's glory. Your health is
given you that you may have the free disposal of all your mental and
bodily powers to employ them in his service; your happiness, that you
may have energy to diffuse peace and cheerfulness around you; your life,
that you may "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." We read
of fine sacrifices of the kind I deprecate in novels and romances: we
may admire them in heathen story; but with such sacrifices the real
Christian has no concern. He must not give away that which is not his
own. "Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body,
and in your spirit, which are God's."[42]

In the case of a sacrifice of life--one which, of course, can very
rarely occur,--the dangerous results of thus, as it were, taking events
out of the hand of God cannot be always visible to our sight at present:
we should, however, contemplate what they might possibly be. Let us,
then, consider the injury that may result to the self-sacrificer,
throughout the countless ages of eternity, from the loss of that
working-time of hours, days, and years, wilfully flung from him for the
uncertain benefit of another. Yes, uncertain, for the person may at that
time have been in a state of greater meetness for heaven than he will
ever again enjoy: there may be future fearful temptations, and
consequent falling into sin, from which he would have been preserved if
his death had taken place when the providence of God seemed to will it.
Of course, none of us can, by the most wilful disobedience, dispose
events in any way but exactly that which his hand and his counsel have
determined before the foundation of the world;[43] but when we go out of
the narrow path of duty, we attempt, as far as in us lies, to reverse
his unchangeable decrees, and we "have ou