Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense is a life of death. You go and bury a seed and that is husbandry; but you bury one, that you may reap a hundred fold. Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life. The lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to reach a higher sphere.
It is no more necessary to be self-denying to be a Christian, than it is to be an artist, or to be an honest man, or to be a man at all, in distinction from a brute. Of all joyful, smiling, ever-laughing experiences, there are none like those which spring from true religion.—BEECHER.
