Self, 6 Lectures (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Self-Interest. ]j HIS fourth verse comes very well as a- consequence of, and as an addition to, the exhortation which closes the third verse, to esteem others better than ourselves. For it is a phase of the study of self, which it is very difficult to guard against, and at the same time which it is very important that we should guard against, if we really wish to be like Christ. I put in the word really before the word wish, for I often think that they who in a general and vague way think that they wish to follow Christ, when it comes to the test of personal and practical holiness in the details of Christian life, are very far from even attempting to follow thatwonderful standard?the life, the example of Christ. And so there is no part of our lives in which this discrepancy between the general standard and the particular application of that standard comes out more glaringly than in this subject?self-interest. And first of all, in looking at this, the question will occur to many, Are we not to take care of ourselves ? The world is full of rogues and cheats, impostors and robbers: we are not living in an imaginary Arcadia, where a girl might walk the distance between Northumberland and Cornwall with a purse of gold open in her hand; but we are living in an age, and under circumstances, when the utmost precaution, the most complicated checks, the strongest bars and bolts, do not succeed in keeping people from being robbed and having their rights injured. Quite true; and yet, for all that, our Christianity being of God, and being the expression of the mind and will of God, must be adapted to the present day as much as to any, and must beadapted to the world as it is, not to any imaginary world, where all are good. In confirmation of this, we must allow that the Sermon on the ...