way. We
are not asked to live for others without any heart to do so. We are not
asked to choose as our eternal life what will be a constant pain and can
only be reluctantly done. The very heathen would not offer in sacrifice
the animal that struggled as it was led to the altar. All sacrifice must
be willingly made; it must be the sacrifice which is prompted by love.
God and this world demand our best work, and only what we do with
pleasure can be our best work. Sacrifice of self and labour for others
are not like Christ's sacrifice and labour unless they spring from love.
Forced, reluctant, constrained sacrifice or service--service which is no
joy to ourselves through the love we bear to those for whom we do it--is
not the service that is required of us. Service into which we can throw
our whole strength, because we are convinced it will be of use to
others, and because we long to see them enjoying it--this is the service
required. Love, in short, is the solution of all. Find your happiness in
the happiness of many rather than in the happiness of one, and life
becomes simple and inspiring.

Nor are we to suppose that this is an impracticable, high-pitched
counsel of perfection with which plain men need not trouble themselves.
_Every_ human life is under this law. There is no path to goodness or to
happiness save this one. Nature herself teaches us as much. When a man
is truly attracted by another, and when genuine affection possesses his
heart, his whole being is enlarged, and he finds it his best pleasure to
serve that person. The father who sees his children enjoying the fruit
of his toil feels himself a far richer man than if he were spending all
on himself. But this family affection, this domestic solution of the
problem of happy self-sacrifice, is intended to encourage and show us
the way to a wider extension of our love, and thereby of our use and
happiness. The more love we have, the happier we are. Self-sacrifice
looks miserable, and we shrink from it as from death and destitution,
because we look at it in separation from the love it springs from.
Self-sacrifice without love _is_ death; we abandon our own life and do
not find it again in any other. It is a seed ground under the heel, not
a seed lightly thrown into prepared soil. It is in love that goodness
and happiness have their common root. And it is this love which is
required of us and promised to us. So that as often as we shudder at the
dissolution of our