CHAPTER VIII.

RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.

History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues.  In all ages selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages and achieved for man victories many and great.  The church owes so much to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured the fetter and the fagot rather than belie their convictions, woman has derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable excellence.

Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society celebrates.  Yet when on these high days, through song or story the poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the assembled multitude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice.  Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself.  As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero.  For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath.  A sentinel with a flaming sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.

“Shall I be remembered by posterity?” asked the dying Garfield.  In this eager, tremulous question the renowned and the obscure alike have a pathetic interest.  For the deeply reflective mind oblivion is a thought all unendurable.  The tool man fashions, the structure he rears, the success he achieves, not less than his marble monument, looks down upon the beholder with a mute appeal for recollection.  To each eager aspirant for everlasting remembrance Christ comes whispering his secret of abiding renown.  Speaking not as an amateur, but as a master, Christ affirms that he who would save his life must lose it, that he who would be remembered by others must forget himself, that the soldier who flees from danger to save his body shall leave that life upon the battlefield, while he who plunges his banner into the very thick of the fight and is carried off the field upon his shield shall in safety bear his life away.  Hard seem the terms; they rebuke ease, they smite self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise.  But in accepting Christ’s principle and forsaking their palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid.  To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word:  Life is through death, and immortal renown through self-renunciation.