self-forgetfulness in which men realize their life. Very often in the
lower stages of man's life he forgets himself, with a slightly
emphasized individual existence, not thinking very much of the purpose
of his life, till he easily forgets himself among the things that are
around him and forgets himself simply because there is so little of
himself for him to forget; but do not you know perfectly well how very
often when a man's life becomes intensified and earnest, when he becomes
completely possessed with some great passion and desire, it seems for
the time to intensify his selfishness? It does intensify his
selfishness. He is thinking so much in regard to himself that the
thought of other persons and their interests is shut out of his life.
And so very often when a man has set before him the great passion of the
divine life, when he is called by God to live the life of God, and to
enter into the rewards of God, very often there seems to close around
his life a certain bondage of selfishness, and he who gave himself
freely to his fellow-men before now seems, by the very intensity,
eagerness, and earnestness with which his mind is set upon the prize of
the new life which is presented to him--it seems as if everything became
concentrated upon himself, the saving of his soul, the winning of his
salvation. That seat in heaven seems to burn so before his eyes that he
cannot be satisfied for a moment with any thought that draws him away
from it, and he presses forward that he may be saved. But by and by, as
he enters more deeply into that life, the self-forgetfulness comes to
him again and as a diviner thing. By and by, as the man walks up the
mountain, he seems to pass out of the cloud which hangs about the lower
slopes of the mountain, until at last he stands upon the pinnacle at the
top, and there is in the perfect light. Is it not exactly like the
mountain at whose foot there seems to be the open sunshine where men see
everything, and on whose summit there is the sunshine, but on whose
sides, and half way up, there seems to linger a long cloud, in which man