Page:MyPrayerBookHappinessInGoodness.djvu/20

 Charity; it  is  a  preacher,  an  advocate  of  Christian philanthropy,  of  true  altruism,  of  which  a well-known  writer  says:

"We hear  a  great  deal  of  altruism,  as  it  is  called, nowadays  —  the  doctrine,  in  other  words,  of  living entirely  for  others.  This  is  man's  true  happiness and  peace,  his  only  good  —  making  others  happy. And  we  at  once  ask,  what  is  this  happiness  which we  are  to  secure  for  others  —  the  same  kind  as  our own,  or  a  different  kind?  Surely  the  same  kind, for  we  are  all  men  of  like  nature,  more  or  less.  It seems,  then,  as  far  as  we  can  catch  the  idea,  that I  am  to  seek  true  happiness  in  making  others  seek their  true  happiness,  making  yet  others  seek  their true  happiness,  and  so  on  without  end;  and  we never  learn  what  that  happiness,  personal  and independent,  consists  in.  We  are  told  that  our modern  moralists  have  improved  very  much  on Christianity;  that  they  have  interpreted  it  to  itself; that they  have  discovered  the  unknown,  or  at  least only half-known,  secret  of  unselfishness,  of  true benevolence and  philanthropy,  which  Christ  was only groping  after  according  to  old-world  lights. They would  take,  as  an  extreme  embodiment  of  a certain  egoistic  spirit  which  they  deplore  in  Christianity, St.  Simon  Stylites,  standing  year  after year on  his  pillar  in  the  desert,  isolated  almost ostentatiously (if  it  be  not  a  contradiction)  from all intercourse  with  his  fellow  men;  intent  wholly on his  own  interior  spiritual  perfection  and  on