s essay on 'The Education of the World'
in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read
it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I {175} love that old man
with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I
thank God for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes
me worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.'
Goodness is as infectious as any disease.

I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life. I
suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives--see them from
the inside.

Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.

It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us
selves--wills--of our own. Then He makes them His own by more
self-sacrifice. We are made in His image--made to go out of self, and
find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our
freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just
scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and
enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We
take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.

I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own--when at first
sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us--when
the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his
ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we
are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more
human, more divine than before.

'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil His {176} righteous will' is the
thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. God does not choose the
agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His
choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ
large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the
revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack
of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the
stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I
have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye
troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God
knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces
of good must be united ('Keep, ah!