Or
perhaps you wish the comforts of a household. By payment of the
due bearing of its burdens, you may hope to obtain it,--surely not
otherwise. Do you ask that this house may be a true home, a treasury
for wealth of the heart, a little heaven? Once more the word
is _pay_,--pay your own heart's unselfish love, pay a generous
trustfulness, a pure sympathy, a tender consideration, and a sweet
firm-heartedness withal. And so, wherever there is a gaining, there
is a warning,--wherever a well-being, a well-doing,--wherever a
preciousness, a price of possession; and he who scants the payment
stints the purchase; and he that will proffer nothing shall profit
nothing; but he that freely and wisely gives shall receive as freely.
But these _desiderata_ which I have named are all prices either of
ordinary use, of comfort, or felicity; and it is generally understood
that happiness is costly: but virtue? Virtue, so far from costing
anything, is often supposed to be itself a price that you pay for
happiness. It is told us that we shall be rewarded for our virtue;
what moralistic commonplace is more common than this? But rewarded
for your virtue you are not to be; you are to pay for it; at least,
payment made, rather than received, is the principal fact.
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