The Argosy — page 304: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

288 Of Self-Sacrifice. This is quite true. He has no time for anything but himself. He feels that we are living at a rapid rate. If he halts a moment on the way, someone else passes him swiftly, and he is lost. His place is gone. He cannot recover it. So he goes onwards in selfishness and self-absorp- tion, till time creeps and creeps ; leaving with the rich and luxurious few traces of furrows or grey hairs; until at last the eyes close in their last sleep: one more life is over, for whose soul a world would be no ransom; and the body, so restless hitherto, in the tomb has rest. Not for this were we brought into the world. Each life has a distinct and separate purpose of its’ own. Each soul is created, not only to accomplish some great work—for even the humblest career earnestly fulfilled will, when the life is laid aside, leave behind it an impression of completeness—but also to help‘on other souls through their pilgrimage of pain and travail. This cannot be done without an amount, more or less, of self-sacrifice. It is terrible to contemplate the dearth of this spirit, arising in part from a lack of sympathy in the human heart : a want, mark you, that may be cultivated. Take, reader, a little of your own experience. Imagine yourself in great trouble ; in sore need ; be it that of pity, of disburdening your soul, or the strait of poverty. How many friends or acquaintances do you possess to whom you could confidently apply with a sure feeling of trust; of being fully heard and fully answered? Five? Four? Three? No. Two? Probably not. One? Even one is doubtful. And yet, inasmuch as every soul is born into the world with the impress of the Divine Image, so no soul need have a heart without sympathy, and all those beauties of virtue which therefrom blossom into life. Success itself is one of the greatest destroyers of self-sacrifice, unless the mind be noble and the heart large; just as wealth often closes its doors to the need of the world, because the thoughtless soul has come to be unable to realise in its fulness the need that exists. ‘I am rich, and lack naught ; the distress and misery we hear of must be an idle tale; an overdrawn picture.” Thus men cheat themselves. But, ye rich, believe it not. There is misery and wretchedness enough and to spare, in spite of the purple and fine linen that screen you from it; much that is in your power to lessen. But shillings must not be given for pounds, or pounds where you should give tens and hundreds. Take, for example, the collections in our London churches, on behalf of some good and pressing object, as an instance of what is, and what might be done. But the amount of charity in the world is quite apart from the question of self-sacrifice. People give out of their abundance, and much of it is terribly misapplied. ‘There is no system in distributing. Take the great world of commerce. How many of its members will exercise, in even a small degree, the spirit of self-sacrifice ? “I am able to do this thing for A. He will be a thousand pounds’ the richer; Shall comicbooks.com