VIII

THE TEST OF PRAISE

"The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, and a man is tried by his praise."-PROV. xxvii. 21.

THE other day, when listening to that wonderful, ever-young veteran, Dr. Clifford, I was specially struck by one among the many memorable observations that fell from his lips: "Cain," he said, “is at a discount nowadays; he can't even get into respectable society unless he calls himself Abel." It was just one of those brilliant flashes of thought and phrasing that light up whole wide tracts, if only for an instant. "Cain can't get into respectable society unless he calls himself Abel." The man with bad motives must skilfully hide them, and at least make a pretence that they are good ones. The speculator who desires the annexation of territories where he wants a free hand in making profits never avows his mercantile aims, but appeals to patriotic sentiment. The bigot, anxious to indulge his taste for theological persecution, will invariably pose as a zealous defender of the faith. A politician, intent on safeguarding the sacred rights of capital, will oppose the demand of full-grown men for a minimum wage of five shillings for a day's work underground, in a key of virtuous indignation, and describe such a demand as exceeding the cruelty of feudal barons and American

trusts. And all these tactics, so varied in themselves, prove one thing, and prove it very abundantly-the dependence of a man on the opinion of his fellows, the universal anxiety to earn, if possible, their praise-to avoid, if that should be impossible, at any rate their censure, not to incur their active displeasure. Nothing is more natural than this instinct which bids us seek to stand well with those who can visit their disapprobation upon us in every variety of ways—no motive more powerful or far-reaching in its effects than the desire for recognition, for popularity, for praise.

It would have been strange indeed if in such a store-house of reflections on human nature as the Book of Proverbs there had not been any reference to this topic of all others, to a proclivity which notoriously sways the minds and actions of men more than most ; and in the chapter (xxvii.) part of which we read again this morning, you notice that it is more than once touched upon under various aspects. "Let another man praise thee," we are admonished, "and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." "Better is open rebuke than love that is hidden. Faithful are the wounds of a friend: but the kisses of an enemy are profuse." Last of all—and most pointed of all-come the words of our text, which declare that "a man is tried by his praise."

We are all anxious for praise, and justifiably, indeed inevitably, so; and yet it is a truism that this natural wish, unless it is well and wisely guarded, and kept under control, may be and has been many a man's undoing. If we may keep to the image we have employed on a previous occasion-the image of an experienced and

prosperous man of the world, a shrewd judge of men and matters, giving us, in the evening of his day, the benefit of his experiences and observations, we can fancy such a one expressing himself somewhat in this fashion: "I have seen people under most sorts of trials and difficulties; I have seen them tried by poverty, tried by an obstinate and inexplicable run of unsuccess, by physical infirmity that made every effort doubly and trebly hard, by neglect and want of appreciation, by darkness and doubt of God's care and goodness-and I have seen them overcome all these ; but a rock on which I have witnessed more people come to grief than on most others has been praise and popularity—both the desire and the thing itself."

We may think it a paradox when Jesus says, "Woe unto you when all shall speak well of you," but the seeming paradox is based on the keenest insight into human nature. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred such a universal popularity will have been purchased at too great a price, at the cost of principle, self-respect, loyalty to truth; to please everybody is a dangerous enterprise, dangerous to oneself. To have no enemies, no detractors, must mean that a man has acquired considerable skill in moral tight-rope walking and seeming to be on both sides at one and the same time— and that just for the sake of having the good opinion of all and sundry. No, no-the thing that tests a man more than any other trial is his attitude towards praise and what other people think of him. Let us look at this subject, then, for a short while together this morning, and see if we cannot discover certain leading principles for our guidance; and may I say this in passing-I trust that no one here feels that

when we are dealing with these questions of conduct and practice, we are any the less occupied with religion, for indeed we look upon faith and works not as two things, but as the two sides of one and the same.

To begin with, let us admit that we are all shaped and influenced for better or worse, to an incalculable extent, by the verdicts, the appreciation, the good or bad opinion of those in whose midst we move, and it is hard -we all know how hard, except those who have never tried—to stand against that pressure. A dozen times in the course of every day we are reminded that no one liveth to himself, and that our little world will not hesitate to pass its judgment upon our actions and general demeanour. Generally speaking, it is true that this verdict is informed with a rough justice; it serves to remind us, and sometimes sharply, that the eyes of our fellows are on us, and that we must not think we can go on in independence of their approval or disapproval. Those eyes are quick to detect meanness, conceit, self-seeking, a vindictive or ungenerous spirit, nor are their owners usually backward in visiting these things with their censure; and since we are all of us given to self-deception and possess abundant resource in fashioning excuses for ourselves, it is just as well that there should be this force of public opinion to correct our own estimate of ourselves, a force which in the last resort can make itself unmistakably felt. In this simplest sense of all a man is tried by his praise; that is to say, there is a permanent tribunal sitting, a permanent jury empanelled, to try him, occupied in weighing him day by day, and expressing its findings in swift and summary fashion. The people who work by our side in the office; our colleagues in the school or

on a committee; our employees and dependents; all these have a pretty shrewd idea of our qualities and defects and their idea is worth listening to. They could give us an outside view of ourselves that might amaze us; yes, and the members of our own households, too, could assess us all too accuratelylet us be thankful for their forbearance! You know the Rugby schoolboy's summing-up of Dr. Temple when the latter was headmaster : Temple's a beast, but he's a just beast.” Well, you had it all there, and it was pretty correct, both the noun and the adjective.

But now let us go a step forward; a man is tried not only by the praise or otherwise which he receives, but also and especially by the praise he seeks, and those from whom he seeks it. The lowest and the highest ambitions find their scope and expression here. It is quite right and unavoidable that we should value the judgment of others, for we are not self-sufficient, nor meant to be; but who those others are, by whose commendation we set store-that is the great and allimportant question! Whose good opinion, whose applause, do we want? With what set or section are we eager to be popular? That is one of the truest and at the same time most searching tests of our real worth. Yes, men and women are tried, their value is assessed by the calibre of those who praise them; the mob will always have its darlings, but they will be such darlings as the mob can appreciate, finding its own qualities faithfully portrayed in them. The sensational novelist, or for the matter of that the sensational preacher, will have his enthusiastic public among the shallow and thoughtless, but it is