DOING GOOD TURNS

to people.  There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

“The greatest thing,” says some one, “a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children.”  I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are?  How much the world needs it!  How easily it is done!  How instantaneously it acts!  How infallibly it is remembered!  How superabundantly it pays itself back—­for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as Love.  “Love never faileth.”  Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life.  “Love,” I say with Browning, “is energy of life.”

    “For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
    And hope and fear,
    Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,—­
    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.”

Where Love is, God is.  He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God.  God is Love.  Therefore love.  Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love.  Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.  There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure.  Give pleasure.  Lose no chance of giving pleasure; for that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit.  “I shall pass through this world but once.  Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.  Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

Generosity.  “Love envieth not.”  This is love in competition with others.  Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better.  Envy them not.  Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction.  How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian feeling!  That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian’s soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity.  Only one thing truly need the Christian envy—­the large, rich, generous soul which “envieth not.”

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this further thing, Humility—­to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done.  After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it.  Love hides even from itself.  Love waives even self-satisfaction.  “Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”  Humility—­love hiding.