Selfishness or Sacrifice by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1908

Selfishness or Sacrifice

By C. M. S.

The great battle of the ages, the great controversy between light and darkness, good and evil, has been the battle, the controversy, to determine whether self-seeking or self-sacrifice should be the dominating characteristic throughout the universe. Jesus Christ on the one hand and Lucifer on the other stand forth as the willing representatives of those two principles. In Christ is love and self-sacrifice personified; in Lucifer is centered all that wars against Christ and his mission of love and reconciliation. Love set a race in Eden to fill a world with love and joy and peace. Selfishness planted there the seeds of doubt and distrust, discord and disbelief; and from those seeds have grown the thistles and thorns of sorrow, misery, hatred, and death. Before the advent of self-interest, man heard the counsels of God from the very lips of God; but now the glory of God is veiled from man, and the glory of man is no more.

When selfish interests are cherished in the heart of man, that soul has ranged itself on the side of him who brought us all our sorrow, on the side of him whose bitter business it has been through the centuries to fight against God, and multiply tombs for his children. When our own interests loom large in our eyes, and those of our neighbor grow dim and small, we may know that we are passing over to the enchanted ground at whose farther border waits the sleep of eternal death. God’s kingdom will not always endure part self-sacrifice and part self-love. The one tends to life everlasting, the other breeds naught but sorrow and death. The one is God’s undying purpose; the other is at war with him and his purpose. It is well that we take alarm at the first symptoms of selfishness in our hearts, for every such manifestation is putting a wider gulf between us and eternal life. Such attributes persisted in reduce us to the chaff and the dross which the fires of earth’s cleansing will consume.

The motive power of God’s universe must be love, for he is love. That actuated him in the gift of Christ; that actuated Christ in the gift of himself; and that will be the actuating motive of every soul that enters the gates of the city of God. Self-love has been a dominating characteristic in the history of the human race; but it will not be seen in the renovated universe. We have no time but the present in which, with the help of God, to weed it out of our lives; and the size of the task and the shortness of the time make it necessary that we give due diligence to the work. Nor are we to imagine that this cleansing of our lives can be accomplished by turning our attention on ourselves. The example of our Redeemer must be our guide. Forgetting self in the service of others—this brings us into harmony with the eternal purpose of God, and makes us coworkers with Christ in finishing his great undertaking and ushering in the kingdom of our God. C. M. S.