p. 187 | Self by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 10, 1863

Self.

By J. Clarke

ONE would suppose that a trifle would bear to be trifled with; that a cheat would stand a swindle; that a coquette would bear disappointment; that a joker would bear a jest; that a scold would bear rough usage; that a tyrant would smile at being corrected; but by some strange obliquity it is exactly the reverse.

The impatient person galls terribly under the lash; the critic goes raving under criticism; the joker flashes at being the victim of a keen retort; the persecutor screams when the flame scorches his flesh; the tyrant pines in confinement; the selfish person is dreadfully disgusted at the selfishness which causes pain or inconvenience, or expense to himself; the proud person cannot bear superciliousness when it bears upon his own important self.

Oh self, how dear thou art! Dear self, for thee a hundred angels might die, yet still thou wouldst think thyself worth a hundred more. For thee a Saviour might shed his blood, yet this is only a stepping-stone for thy advancement. O important self! for thee and for thy convenience were all things made.

Says self, Oh that I could clasp the universe, grasp the millions of California, the fame of a Caesar, the eloquence of Cicero, or Demosthenes, the wealth of Croesus.

Insatiable self! never satisfied! always wishing, always ravenous, only lacking teeth and claws to make a lion, or bear, or hyena, or wolf, or some monster of the wild desert.

Such is the tendency of selfishness: down down to the lowest grade until the beast is fully developed.

Benevolence tends upward. By as much as selfishness tends downward, by so much does benevolence tend upward; up, up, to the skies, while selfishness tends down, down, to the level of the brute, as we have just shown.

Look at the lower grades of humanity, as the Hottentot, the Bushman, the New Zealand cannibal. What has caused all this degradation? Selfishness, selfishness, in all its varied forms has seduced the noble race of man to its present contemptible weakness. And let not the gentle American, of Caucasian stock, plume himself upon his beauty and strength. Let him contemplate the strength of the Roman soldier who marched from 20 to 40 miles per day carrying an average of 160 lbs., including three days provisions. Or let us go back to the testimony of Esdras, who wrote centuries previous to the Christian era, thus: "Consider thou therefore also how that ye are less of stature than those that were before you, and so are they that come after you less than ye, as the creatures which now begin to be old, and have passed over the strength of youth." What then must have been the manhood of our race if it had passed its prime in Esdras' time, and what must be its dotage now? No wonder the image was graded from gold to silver to brass to iron to clay, yet pride and selfishness abound more in the clay of the image than in the pure metals.

Selfishness in its varied forms is still doing its dirty work, and every generation is falling upon a lower step, yet by a strange delusion they fancy it is a rising scale of human development.

But benevolence still visits earth. She is an angel of heavenly birth. She cannot take up her abode on earth. No, she must visit her native skies to recruit her strength. She cannot breathe the atmosphere of earth. She would soon die, as those who descend into impure wells die from the deadly gases confined there. But by often being refreshed above she visits earth, and beckons us to follow her where is no selfish thought or act.

J. CLARKE.