We take, as it were, the disposal of our fate out of the hands of God as
much when we refuse the happiness He sends us as when we turn aside from
the path of duty on account of some rough passage we see there before
us. Good and evil both come from the hands of the Lord. We should be
watchful to receive every thing exactly in the way He sees it fit for
us.
Experience, as well as theory, confirms the truth of the above
assertions. Consider even your own case with relation to any sacrifice
of your own real happiness to the supposed happiness of another. I can
imagine this possible even in a selfish disposition, not yet hardened.
Your good-nature, warm feelings, and pride (in you a powerfully
actuating principle) may have at times induced you to make, in moments
of excitement, sacrifices of which you have not fully "counted the
cost." Let us, then, examine this point in relation to yourself, and to
the petty sacrifices of daily life. If you have allowed others to
encroach too much on your time, if you have given up to them your
innocent pleasures, your improving pursuits, and favourite companions,
has this indulgence of their selfishness really added to their
happiness? Has it not rather been unobserved, except so far to increase
the unreasonableness of their expectations from you, to make them angry
when it at last becomes necessary to resist their advanced
encroachments? On your own side, too, has it not rather tended to
irritate you against people whom you formerly liked, because you are
suffering from the daily and hourly pressure of the sacrifices you have
imprudently made for them? Believe me, there can be no peace or
happiness in domestic life without a _bien entendu_ self-love, which
will be found by intelligent experience to be a preservative from
selfishness, instead of a manifestation of it.
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