I cannot even discover truth or beauty or holiness, much less win them to myself, if I do not seek them for their own sake. I cannot see what another man is, and I cannot make him at one with me in a real fellowship, unless I care about him (as we say) because he is what he is, and so make his interests mine. If I use any human being as a mere instrument to serve my purpose I lose that human being, though I may keep the instrument. Men and women, like goodness and truth and beauty—and God—cannot be made mine unless I give myself to them.
'It is very hard to be a Christian.' It certainly is. The man who husbands life forfeits it, and yet life is dear. 'Die to live, the philosopher advises, as his counsel of prudence. But how is a man to lay down life from nothing more than prudence? How can a man be a prudent and careful adventurer of life? He may prudently and carefully be a merchant, but never an adventurer. And true religion has no truck with merchandise or merchants of the spirit. Its watchword is love—the love that gives, the love God is, the love royal that seeks no gain, the love of Christ.
So according to religion the way of giving is, in truth and experience, the way of gain; but if we try to follow it for gain we find ourselves altogether outside the way, not giving and therefore without gain. It is hard to be a Christian. It is exceedingly hard to love as God loves. In fact we cannot, unless God shall become man in us. He is the supreme giver and our supreme gain. Inasmuch as we love the things and persons God loves, for their own sake (which, naturally, we shall do when he dwells in our hearts and our desires), we shall win them to ourselves; whether they are, for instance, goodness, truth and beauty, or our fellow-men. And in thus and to that extent winning the objects of our love we shall unveil that reality we either call by those abstract names, or find revealed in our fellows—the reality which is God. Under those mere names God himself lies concealed. 'I am the way, the truth and the life'—I myself, he says to the men who are discovering beauty or holiness or truth, am that which you ignorantly worship. 'When saw we thee?' they still may ask. Yet they knew him when through self-giving they knew these. And names are nothing, where reality is tasted, touched and handled.