The Sinfulness and Selfishness [pp. 22-41]

THE SINFULNESS OF SELFISHNESS.
in the token sent, that excites a grateful exultation and allows a
larger measure of self-respect in the communicated official
respect. So any pledge of remembrance or badge of approving
recognition, itself of no value or if of precious material not prized
at all for its own sake, having this in it that your sovereign
hereby signifies he deems you worthy of his special approbation,
such approving testimonial has in it that which is more precious
to loyalty than costly gems and gold.
This respect for sovereignty has a yet more striking manifestation when a loyal subject has dishonored authority. A man
whose controlling disposition is obedient and faithful has been
off his guard and betrayed into some act of indiscretion or insubordination, and he awakes in surprise to find his sovereign
has been dishonored by his conduct, and all remembrance of
the deed and reflection on the crime stings the spirit with selfreproach which is wholly unlike the fear of coming punishment.
The dishonor to law and not the penalty of law is his burden.
The "look" Jesus turned on denying Peter carried in it no
threat of coming penal infliction, and imposed no sentient suffering, but it sent the quick conviction of his Master's deep disapprobation, and the tears awakened came from a bitterness of
spirit, such as could be made to flow from no agony of sense.
And lastly-the working of this reverence for authority sometimes surprisingly comes out in the conduct of a consciencestricken criminal. A man has perpetrated some bloody deed in
darkness, and no witness lives but in his own consciousness. But
he has hours of frightful remembrance that stir his spirit with
convictions of guilt more intolerable than any of which he before
supposed his moral being was capable. He cannot rest. He
cannot soothe his spirit from any quarter. With no danger of
detection and no dread of legal penalty, he has constantly within
the pressure of the stern claim that "blood should have blood."
The same regard for law and righteous authority which sends
an excited community to find and arrest a murderer takes hold
on the murderer himself, and with no avenger near —that he
may ease his insupportable burden, and pacify the inward irresistible demands of justice-that guilty man becomes his own
accuser, and chooses to mieet his penal desert, rather than have
that piercing voice of a brother's blood ringing in his ears any
longer.
1874.]
33