For we know, that if we yield to it,--if we sacrifice our
duty to our pleasure or our gain,--it is certain to make us do
something mean, covetous, even fraudulent, in the eyes of God and
man.
But if we carry that spirit into religion, and our spiritual and
heavenly duties; if we forget that that is the spirit of the world;
if we forget that we renounced the world at our baptism, and that we
therefore promised not to shape our lives by ITS rules and maxims; if
our thought is, not of whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, of good report, whatsoever
brings us true honour and deserved praise from God and from man; if
we think only that intensely selfish and worldly thought, How much
will God take for saving my soul?--which is the secret thought (alas
that it should be so!) of too many of all denominations,--then we
shall be in a fair way of killing our souls; so that if they be
saved, they will not at all events be saved alive. For we shall kill
in our souls just those instincts of purity, justice, generosity,
mercy, love, in one word, of unselfishness and unworldliness, which
make the very life of the soul, because they are inspired by the
Spirit of God, even the Holy Ghost. And we shall be but too likely
not to sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus--as St.
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