Selfishness, then, I consider as a perversion of the natural and divinely-impressed instinct of self-love.  It is a desire for things which are not really good for us, followed by an endeavour to obtain those things to the injury of our neighbour.[41] Where a sacrifice which benefits your neighbour can inflict no real injury on yourself, it would be selfishness not to make the sacrifice.  On the contrary, where either one or the other must suffer an equal injury, (equal in all points of view—­in permanence, in powers of endurance, &c.,) self-love requires that you should here prefer yourself.  You have no right to sacrifice your own health, your own happiness, or your own life, to preserve the health, or the life, or the happiness of another; for none of these things are your own:  they are only entrusted to your stewardship, to be made the best use of for God’s glory.  Your health is given you that you may have the free disposal of all your mental and bodily powers to employ them in his service; your happiness, that you may have energy to diffuse peace and cheerfulness around you; your life, that you may “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  We read of fine sacrifices of the kind I deprecate in novels and romances:  we may admire them in heathen story; but with such sacrifices the real Christian has no concern.  He must not give away that which is not his own.  “Ye are bought with a price:  therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s."[42]

In the case of a sacrifice of life—­one which, of course, can very rarely occur,—­the dangerous results of thus, as it were, taking events out of the hand of God cannot be always visible to our sight at present:  we should, however, contemplate what they might possibly be.  Let us, then, consider the injury that may result to the self-sacrificer, throughout the countless ages of eternity, from the loss of that working-time of hours, days, and years, wilfully flung from him for the uncertain benefit of another.  Yes, uncertain, for the person may at that time have been in a state of greater meetness for heaven than he will ever again enjoy:  there may be future fearful temptations, and consequent falling into sin, from which he would have been preserved if his death had taken place when the providence of God seemed to will it.  Of course, none of us can, by the most wilful disobedience, dispose events in any way but exactly that which his hand and his counsel have determined before the foundation of the world;[43] but when we go out of the narrow path of duty, we attempt, as far as in us lies, to reverse his unchangeable decrees, and we “have our reward;” we mar our own welfare, and that of others, when we make any effort to take the providing for it out of the hands of the Omnipotent.

It is, however, only for the establishment of a principle that it could be necessary to discuss the duties involved in such rare emergencies.  I shall therefore proceed without further delay to the more common sacrifices of which I have spoken, and explain to you what I mean by such sacrifices.