00 ESSAYS AND LEITERS
who considered salvation by works as insufficient. And together with this teaching of selfishness, which pre- scribes that you shall give to your neighbours only what you do not want yourself, they preach love, and recall with patlios the celebrated words of I*aul in the tliirteenlh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corin- thians, about love.
Notwithstandinir that the Gospels overflow with demands for self-renunciation, with indications that self-renunciation is the first condition of I bristian per- fection ; notwithstanding such dear expressions as : ' 'li<)S()ever will not take up his cross ..." ' >'hoso- ever bath not forsaken father and mother . . .' MV'ho- soever shall lose liis life . . .' — people assure themselves and others that it is possible to love men without renouncing that to which one is nccustome<l, or even what one jdeases to consider becoming for one's self.
So speak the ("hurcii j»eople ; and those who reject not only the Church but also the (bristian teaching (Freethinkers^ think, speak, write, and act, in just the same way. These men assure themselves and others that without in the least diminishing their needs, with- out overcoming their lusts, they can serve mankind — i.e., lead a good life.
Men have thrown aside the heathen sequence of virtues; but, not assimilating the Christian teaching in its true significance, they have not accepted the Christian sequence, and are left quite without guidance.
IV.
In olden times, when there was no Christian teach- ing, all the teachers of life, beginning with Socrates, regarded as the first virtue of life, self-control — iyKpareia or (Tuxppoci'vr] ; and it was understood that every virtue must begin with and pass through this one. It was clear that a man who had no self-control, who had developed an immense number of desires and had 3'ielded himself up to them, could not lead a good life. it was evident that before a man could even think of
