have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall
be taken away even that he hath.'

To object to Christianity as selfish, is utter foolishness; Christianity
alone gives any hope of deliverance from selfishness. Is it selfish to
desire to love? Is it selfish to hope for purity and the sight of God?
What better can we do for our neighbour than to become altogether
righteous toward him? Will he not be the nearer sharing in the exceeding
great reward of a return to the divine idea?

Where is the evil toward God, where the wrong to my neighbour, if I
think sometimes of the joys to follow in the train of perfect loving? Is
not the atmosphere of God, love itself, the very breath of the Father,
wherein can float no thinnest pollution of selfishness, the only
material wherewithal to build the airy castles of heaven? 'Creator,' the
childlike heart might cry, 'give me all the wages, all the reward thy
perfect father-heart can give thy unmeriting child. My fit wages may be
pain, sorrow, humiliation of soul: I stretch out my hands to receive
them. Thy reward will be to lift me out of the mire of self-love, and
bring me nearer to thyself and thy children: welcome, divinest of good
things! Thy highest reward is thy purest gift; thou didst make me for it
from the first; thou, the eternal life, hast been labouring still to fit
me for receiving it--the vision, the knowledge, the possession of
thyself. I can seek but what thou waitest and watchest to give: I would
be such into whom thy love can flow.'

It seems to me that the only merit that could live before God, is the
merit of Jesus--who of himself, at once, untaught, unimplored, laid
himself aside, and turned to the Father, refusing his life save in the
Father. Like God, of himself he chose righteousness, and so merited to
sit on the throne of God. In the same spirit he gave himself afterward
to his father's children, and merited the power to transfuse the
life-redeeming energy of his spirit into theirs: made perfect, he became
the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. But it is a
word of little daring, that Jesus had no thought of merit in what he
did--that he saw only what he had to be, what he must do.--I speak after
the poor fashion of a man lost in what is too great for him, yet is his
very life.--Where can be a man's merit in refusing to go down to an
abyss of loss--loss of the right to be, loss of his father, loss of
himself? Would Satan, with a