to himself. And undoubtedly the more he shared, the more he possessed, for spiritual goods always multiply by division. Are we not facing here a basic truth in our lives? Before we can fully enjoy anything we must share it. Even a good book, good music, beautiful scenery-anything is enjoyed the more when we divide with others the experience. But this prerequisite for full happiness is distinctly unselfish. No man can achieve this special brand of abiding satisfaction by any manipulating of self-regard alone. "All who joy would win Must share it. Happiness was born a twin." Everlasting Father, I beseech Thee to enable me to love Thee with all my heart and soul and strength and mind, and my neighbor as myself. Help me to be meek and lowly in heart. Sweeten my temper and dispose me to be kind and helpful to all men. Make me kind in thought, gentle in speech, generous in action. Teach me that it is more blessed to give than to receive; that it is better to minister than to be ministered unto; better to forget myself than to put myself forward. Deliver me from anger and from envy; from all harsh thoughts and unlovely manners. Make me of some use in this world; may I more and more forget myself and work the work of Him who sent me here; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.-W. Angus Knight. Fourth Week, Fifth Day For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.-Eph. 3:14-19. Here surely was a source of happiness in Paul's life, without which he would have been utterly bereft: he had spiritual resources within him on which even in his Roman prison he could fall back for re-creation and refreshment. Sooner or later all men come to the need of such inner wells of living water. Trouble falls upon us and by it we are driven in upon ourselves. The days arrive when happiness cannot spring from outward circumstance; we must discover it within, and carry it with us amid forbidding conditions. But a selfish man never can find such sources of joy within himself. Pascal was right: "The man who lives only for himself hates nothing so much as being alone with himself." A life inwardly rich and resourceful must be, as Paul prayed, "rooted and grounded in love." Alas! for a man, thrown back by fickle fortune on himself, who discovers in his own narrow cupboard nothing to live on except the resentments, the irritabilities, the peevish tempers, the jealousies, the exaggerated self-regard, the disappointed ambitions of a selfish heart! O God of patience and consolation, give us such good will, we beseech Thee, that with free hearts we may love and serve Thee and our brethren; and, having thus the mind of Christ, may begin heaven on earth, and exercise ourselves therein till that day when heaven where love abideth shall seem no strange habitation to us. For Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.Christina G. Rossetti. Fourth Week, Sixth Day For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing.-II Tim. 4:6-8. In these farewell words of Paul there is the unmistakable accent of a victorious and joyful spirit. And this is the secret of his joy: he has lived his life for a cause that is worth living and dying for. The deep satisfactions of a purposeful existence, dedicated to a worthy end, remain with him to the death. His final note is that of a happy warrior: "I have fought the good fight." Compare with this the retrospect of a self-centered, frittered life! The selfish man may have been carnal, deserving Carlyle's terrific comment on the eighteenth century, "Soul extinct; stomach well alive!" He may have been cruel, like Milton's "sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Or he may have been only a languid, pulseless, self-centered man. But in any case he has missed the supreme satisfaction of life. "This is now to be said," wrote Alfred the Great, "that whilst I live I wish to live nobly, and after life to leave to the men who come after me a memory of good works." Help us, O Lord, to live out on the open sea of Thine allreaching love, and to move with the currents of Thy power; to fill life's sails with the fresh winds of spiritual truth and freedom; to sail up and down time's glorious coast, carrying a heaven-scented cargo of better life to men; to be conscious less of effort and more of power; to see the needy men on the shore and bring them the bread of life; trusting always that when the sails grow gray and the spars and planks begin to groan in the gale, Heaven's safe harbor may welcome in peace the Captain of the Abundant Life. Amen.-George A. Miller. Fourth Week, Seventh Day Is it not plain from this week's study that he who seeks for happiness without unselfishness has missed his road? Friends, useful work, expanded interests, the delights of shared experience, inward spiritual resources, and a worthy purpose at life's center-such unselfish things as these are of the very substance of a joyful and abundant life. All wise men in all ages have perceived that love and life thus belong together, and all of us do indulge in more or less unselfishness. But our service is fluctuating and unsteady. When the Master takes possession of us, straightway the principle of service begins to flower out. It widens its horizons to take in all the world; it deepens its vision to take in the most unlovely and the lost; it enlarges its scope to include even our enemies; it surrounds itself with majestic motives in the love of God, and at last a real Christian stands unfolded, with the spirit of service grown to a "lordly great compass" within. Such a development is not unhappy; it is the very blossom and fruitage of joy. So the Master said: I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.-John 10:9, 10. O God, Author of the world's joy, Bearer of the world's pain, make us glad that we are men and that we have inherited the world's burden; deliver us from the luxury of cheap melancholy; and, at the heart of all our trouble and sorrow, let unconquerable gladness dwell; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.-Henry S. Nash. COMMENT FOR THE WEEK I Such a dedicated use of strength in service as we have been considering plainly involves self-sacrifice. George Eliot in "Romola" says of Tito: "He was to be depended on to make any sacrifice that was not unpleasant." Such a costless amiability is common, but seriously to put service for all sorts of folk at the center of one's purpose involves readiness for self-renunciation which hurts. We run at once, therefore, upon that stumbling block which more than any other trips people up who start to be of use. We want happiness for ourselves; we want for ourselves a full, rich, vibrant life; and this clamorous self-regard seems desperately at war with self-sacrifice. Of all arresting words of Jesus, none is stranger than his declaration of this seeming conflict between self-regard and self-renunciation. So significant is it that oftener than any other single thing he said it is referred to in the gospels: "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 16:25. cf. Matt. 10: 39; Mark 8: 34, 35; Luke 9:23, 24; Luke 17:33; John 12:25.) He too, then, is in love with happiness; he too is seeking for his followers a tingling, copious, satisfying life. The fourth gospel expressly states his purpose: "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." And the New Testament is radiant with the consciousness of having found the secret of abundant living. But whether in the Master himself or in those who closely followed him, one everywhere finds a strange prescription for their overflowing joy. If you wish blessedness, head for service; if you wish the crown of joy, take up the cross of sacrifice; if life is to be yours, lose your life in other lives and in causes that have won your love. So far from seeing abundant living and sacrificial service as mutually exclusive, they see one as the road to the other. However reluctant we may be to base our daily conduct upon this principle, however the subtle suspicion may intrude that the paradox is not quite true, there are times when its truth is evident. Crises come, sudden, unforeseen, that shake men down into the deeper levels of experience, where there is no keeping life except through life's surrender. “If I save my life, I lose it," is the motto engraved upon a statue of Sir Galahad in Ottawa. These are the last words of a youth, in whose memory the statue stands, who, seeing two skaters fall through the ice, plunged in and was drowned in rescuing them. Any such crisis makes evident to a courageous spirit, as it did to this youth, the truth.of the Master's words. During the Great War who has not wonderingly watched men and women finding their joy and glory in self-renouncing devotion to a cause? Multitudes of folk faced selfish ease and terrific sacrifice, and chose sacrifice. Not for all the world in such an hour of need would they have chosen anything besides. "Though love repine and reason chafe, If for the truth he ought to die." Nevertheless, while this principle of Jesus is thus written in sympathetic ink upon the hearts of men so that the acid of a world catastrophe does bring it out where all can read, it pales again in common days. Men find it easier to die for a cause in a crisis than to live for it in ordinary hours. They do not really believe that self-realization through self-surrender is a universal law of life. But the Master saw this principle not as an occasional motive in a tragic hour, but as the common property of all hours. He saw that as surely as a seed must give itself up or else fail of increase, so only in sacrificial service can men find the secret of abundant life (John 12:24). II When we seek thus to understand, as the Master did, the relationship between self-realization and self-sacrifice, we |