A Selfish Being

 If a man’s love centres in himself as the highest or supreme object of his affections, which it must do, if it does not centre in some other being, he is of course a selfish being; and as such he cannot be regarded as a truly holy being. If he thinks for himself, acts for himself, lives for himself, as he must do if he himself be the highest object of love, it must be sufficiently obvious without any comment upon it, that he cannot be otherwise than selfish, and cannot be otherwise than unholy. 

All such love, which thus centres in ourselves, is wrong, and is not acceptable in the sight of God; because it is not proportioned to its object, and is inordinate.

It may be proper to add this remark here, that pure love or holy love is that love which is precisely appropriate to the object; being such, neither more nor less, as the object is precisely entitled to, so far as we are capable of understanding what the object is.

If our love centres in creatures inferior to God, and becomes supreme in them, it is necessarily selfish; as really so, though not so obviously so at first sight, as if it centered in ourselves. It is entirely obvious, that the motive for loving inferior beings in the highest degree, for loving them supremely, cannot be founded in their own characters. It is not a love, to which they are justly entitled. It is not right to love them in this manner. 

And if the motive of this love is not founded in their characters, and is, therefore, not based upon moral rectitude, it is founded, and must necessarily be so, in some selfish modification of our own feelings. The only active principle in man, which is antagonistical to rectitude, is selfishness in some of its modifications. Whenever a moral being deviates from the right, in any and all cases where he has a perception of what the right is, it will be found to be through the influence of self. In all such cases, if a being is loved otherwise than it ought to be, and is therefore loved wrongly, selfishness will always be found at the bottom. It will sometimes be very secret and almost hidden; but it will always be there.

— The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 4.