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summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would
have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal
element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up
our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up
ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for
ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them,
deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already.
Little cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to seek them, to
look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others--_id
opus est_. "Seekest thou great things for thyself?" said the prophet;
"seek them not." Why? Because there is no greatness in things.
Things can not be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even
self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a
great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more
difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having
sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a
partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to love, and nothing is
hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just
His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any
other. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious
lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having
and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no
happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half the
world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think
it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It
consists in giving and serving others. He that would be great among
you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him
remember that there is but one way--it is more blest, it is more
happy, to give than to receive.

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: good temper. "Love is
not easily provoked." Nothing could be more striking than to find
this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless
weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family
failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very
serious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right
in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible
again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most dest