statics might as well not be. Helpfulness, kindliness, service, is but
the expression of love. It is love in action; and unless love thus
manifests itself in action, it is an indication that it is of that weak
and sickly nature that needs exercise, growth, and development, that it
may grow and become strong, healthy, vigorous, and true, instead of
remaining a little, weak, indefinite, sentimental something or nothing.

It was but yesterday that I heard one of the world's greatest thinkers
and speakers, one of our keenest observers of human affairs, state as
his opinion that selfishness is the root of all evil. Now, if it is
possible for any one thing to be the root of all evil, then I think
there is a world of truth in the statement. But, leaving out of account
for the present purpose whether it is true or not, it certainly is true
that he who can't get beyond self robs his life of its chief charms, and
more, defeats the very ends he has in view. It is a well-known law in
the natural world about us that whatever hasn't use, that whatever
serves no purpose, shrivels up. So it is a law of our own being that he
who makes himself of no use, of no service to the great body of mankind,
who is concerned only with his own small self, finds that self, small as
it is, growing smaller and smaller, and those finer and better and
grander qualities of his nature, those that give the chief charm and
happiness to life, shrivelling up. Such an one lives, keeps constant
company with his own diminutive and stunted self; while he who,
forgetting self, makes the object of his life service, helpfulness, and
kindliness to others, finds his whole nature growing and expanding,
himself becoming large-hearted, magnanimous, kind, loving, sympathetic,
joyous, and happy, his life becoming rich and beautiful. For instead of
his own little life alone he has entered into and has part in a hundred,
a thousand, ay, in countless numbers of other lives; and every success,
every joy, every happiness coming to each of these comes as such to him,