Love the Foe and Conqueror of Selfishness.
Christianity denies the assumption, and challenges it all along the line, that pursuit of the higher life need be, in any sense or degree, necessarily selfish. It may be selfish, but it is just as possible that it is wholly otherwise. And more, in all its most energetic and effectual types it is sure to be unselfish, for selfishness is never, as a practical fact, able to kindle into life the more fervent and daring forms of self-assertion. The selfish man seeks his own good, after all, but very sluggishly; it is the unselfish Apostle who pursues it with the zeal of a martyr and the passion of a saint.
I. What exactly does it mean to say that one's own good is selfishly sought? It is selfishly sought only when it is desired for the sake of the gratification it brings, for the sake of the honour and pleasure and gain it may reflect upon its possessor, that is, when it is not sought for its own sake, but only for the sake of what it brings after it. No man has ever produced the highest artistic work for the sake of the pleasure it brought him; such an aim inevitably drains the life-blood out of his heart, and in business and in all employments the same impulse tells. That is the best workman in all employs who works for the sake of the work. Wherever throughout a country the artistic motive in work languishes, there the productions deteriorate and the trade must fail. That is the verdict of a world-wide experience, and Christianity seizes on it in its primary truth.
II. Nor is it only the joy of the artist that is the seed of vigorous action; there is another motive, even more powerful, more universal, and more fruitful: the motive of love. A man will do far more for the love of others than he will ever do for himself; he will display a finer vigour, a nobler patience, a steadier courage, a fuller energy, on behalf of mother, and home, and wife, and children, by the side of which the efforts he will make on behalf of his own interests will look but poor and thin. Unselfishness is the only salt that preserves our soundness; unselfishness is the only fire that purifies, and refines, and betters, and makes perfect. We shall be enabled to do so much only if we love. We live by loving, and the more we love the more we live; and therefore, when life feels dull and the spirits are low, turn and love God, love your neighbour, and you will be healed of your wound.
H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 193.
References: Ephesians 4:31; Ephesians 4:32. R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons,p. 285; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 181.Ephesians 4:32. Spurgeon Sermons,vol. xi., No. 614; vol. xxiv., No. 1448; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 59; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 344; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church,2nd series, p. 321.