Love throws off all that hampers its action, as a runner his coat for a race. Love requires the sound body, the clear mind, the strong will, the sensitive heart, and foregoes all indulgences that impair these things, though in themselves innocent as eating and drinking. Yet Love makes no fuss about its sacrifices, takes them as a simple matter of course, not worth mentioning; for what Love gives up in mere sensuous indulgence is as nothing to the widened affections and enlarged interests gained. To be solemn or sad over what we give up, to proclaim or parade one's self-denials, would be an insult to Love; it would show that the persons we love and the causes we serve are not really as dear to our hearts as the pitiful things we forego for their sake--would show that our Love was a sham.
All pleasure that comes from healthy exercise of body, rational exercise of mind, sympathetic expansion of the affections, strenuous effort of the will, in just and generous living, is at the same time a glorifying of God and an enrichment of ourselves. All pleasure which sacrifices the vigour of the body to the indulgence of some separate appetite, all pleasure which enslaves or degrades or embitters the persons from whom it is procured, all pleasure which breaks down the sacred institutions on which society is founded,--is shameful and debasing, a sin against God, and a wrong to our own souls. The Christian will forego many pleasures which Epicurus and even Aristotle would permit, because he is infinitely more sensitive than they to the effect his pleasures have on poor men and unprotected women whose welfare these earlier teachers did not take into account. On the other hand, the Christian will enter heartily into the joys of pure domestic life, and the delights of struggle with untoward social and political conditions, from which Plato and the Stoics thought it honourable to withdraw. Where God can be glorified and men can be served, there the Christian will either find his pleasure, or with optimistic art, create a pleasure that he does not find.
"Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance; for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou be not seen of men to fast, but of thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee."