^ I am reminded, by one who was present, of a scene when some Americans were announced, seeking an interview, " What is it you want ? " she [Jenny Lind] asked, standing very erect. "Oh, Madame Goldschmidt, we hoped to have the pleasure of seeing you, and making your acquaintance." " Well, here is my front ! " Then (with a whisk round), " There is my back. Now " (with a deep curtsey) " you can go home, and say that you have seen me ! " After her visitors had crept out abashed, she was very penitent for having been at all rude. But she could not endure any impertinent curiosity ; and it was always a perilous experi- ment to introduce a stranger to her, lest she should suspect some motive in the introduction, when her coldness would be freezing.^
2. Jesus did not desire to discourage sympathetic interest in the welfare of others. — It would be strange indeed if He did. He, who in word and act preached the principle, '* Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Yet it may be one thing to say, " What shall I do for this man ? " and another, and a very different one, to ask, " What shall this man do ? " In the first case, the question turns upon present duty, in the second it turns upon future events. The former word raises the thought of a responsibility that is mine, the latter inter- meddles with a care which is really not mine, but God's. And in
^ H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 23. ST. JOHN (2) — 29
450 THE INDIVIDUALITY OF DUTY
every such case, as we pass from what is practical to what is curious, and let the thoughts turn from the matters of personal duty to the mysteries of Divine administration, the Saviour refuses to lift the veil, saying, " Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther. The secret things belong unto God, but the things that are revealed belong unto thee to do them. Askest thou, What shall this man do ? What is that to thee ? Follow thou MB."
^ We are not to suppose that the doctrine of altruism is a gospel peculiar to the enlightenment of more modern times ; there is a Christian altruism that is far more ennobling and radical than anything to which infidel ethics has given the name. Here, as elsewhere, the ideas with which it is hoped to supersede the Bible have been drawn from the Bible itself, as if the voice could be silenced by the echo, and the substance be banished by its own* pallid shadow. We grant it all. But if the question be a question of what is spiritual, if it be a question between the keeping of your own soul unspotted on the one hand, and the doing of some imagined service for your neighbour on the other, then remember that Christ says, " What is that neighbour's state unto thee ? " — what is it, that is to say, in these particular circumstances, under these particular conditions 1 — " Follow thou me ! " Personal holiness is the main thing, personal discipleship, personal salva- tion. It is your first duty to save your soul, and that not for your own sake merely, but for the sake of a God who has given you the trust, and asks it back from your hands by a right which is peculiarly His own. Why do I say these things ? Because there is a class of literature and of sentiment at the present day that exalts the doctrine of love and self-sacrifice towards our neighbour to the extent of attempting to enlist admiration when love and self-sacrifice lead to sin for his sake. No, in the matters that pertain to the soul, its welfare and safe-keeping, one's own cares come first. And to give them anything else than the first place is to become practical idolaters by the preference of a neighbour's claim to God's.^
^ Men speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not vic- torious, has he not a Life of his own to lead ? One Life ; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities ; no second chance to us forevermore ! It were well for us to live not as fools and simu- lacra, but as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us ; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We should look 1 W. A. Gray, TJu Shadow of the Hand, 149.
ST. JOHN XXI. 22 451
to ourselves : there is great merit here in the " duty of staying at home ! " And on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of " worlds " being " saved " in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the world I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world ; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to 1 ^
^ Thomas k Kempis tells us that