harness that God puts upon them, and in the adoption of which they
have had nothing to do. A man of poetic sensibilities finds himself
engaged in the pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how
beautiful poetry is; he feels its influence upon his soul; but
he has no power to create it. Another feels something of the
divinity of music, but muscular facility has been denied to him so
that he cannot play, and his voice is harsh or feeble so that he
cannot sing. He melts and glows under the sway of eloquence, and
worships at a distance the power of the orator over the hearts and
minds of men; but he knows that if he were in the orator's place,
he would break down and become the object even of his own
contempt. Great susceptibilities these people have--passive
spirits--open to all good impressions, appreciative of that which
is best in nature and art, yet without the power to act. They must
always be plates to receive the picture, and never suns and
cameras to imprint it. They must always live within sight of great
and beautiful powers, but never have the privilege of wielding
them. Doomed to the attitude of receptivity, they see that they
can never change it; and that they can never be to others what
others are to them. Thus they grow sore with the thought of their
weakness, and a sense of the circumscription of their faculties.
They see wonderful things--they apprehend the grace and the glory
of great actions--but they can achieve nothing. Many of these walk
as in a dream through life--with a sense of wings upon their
shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They see their companions
rising, but they cling to the earth, and feel the difference as a
humiliation. Alas! how many souls chafe against the consciousness
of inferior powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which
nature endowed them are destroyed!
There would seem to be no end of the causes which produce sore and
tender and sensitive spots upon the human soul. I have said
nothing of grief and love and pity and anger, and a whole brood of
powerful passions, but they are all operative toward the results
which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive sores is
obvious enough. I would prescribe for a man as I would for a
horse--go out to pasture, or adopt another kind of collar, and
never wear the old one again. If a man has become sore by working
against the apathy, the misconceptions, the misconstructions, and
the prejudices of the world, so that he feels the galling burden
of the collar in all his actions, let him change his style of
labor until the ulcer heal. If the conscience becomes sore,
relieve it of that which made it sore, and never believe that
padding can effect a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let
it alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occasions, and
rubbing it against the causes which inflicted it. All the natural
peculiarities of our constitution which wound our pride may be
happily got along with by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a
lovable man, I do not love him any the less because he wears a
long nose, and I should never think of it if he were not always
joking about it, and trying to convince me that it did not offend
him. A man who quarrels with his own constitution, and questions
the benevolence that adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with,
and questions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of the
sort we are considering which time or change will not heal.
It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man to carry a mental
ulcer with him through life--to feel its prick and pang in every
effort--to be conscious of its presence every hour--to be engaged in
covering it from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with
regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to be spoiled by a
little sore, or a large one, when there exists an obvious mode of
cure. It is our immense and intense self-consciousness that stands
in our way always in this matter. The truth is that the world does
not think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A man may
walk through the city of New York with a face "as homely as a
hedge-fence," thinking about it all the time, and wondering what
people think of it, and not a man of all the throng will even see
it. It is so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, our
personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our personal affairs
generally possess very little interest for others. They have enough
to do in taking care of themselves, and have weaknesses, and
failures, and peculiarities enough of their own; and if the world
should spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it go.
It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over it. When a man truly
learns how little important he is in the world, he is generally
beyond the danger of becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may
be.
LESSON XIX.
THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE.
"Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things,
and keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you."--ST. PAUL.
"O popular applause! What heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?"
COWPER.
"_Arbaces_. Why now, you flatter.
"_Mardonius_. I never understood the word."
A KING AND NO KING.
"Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear." SHAKSPEARE.
It is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live who is
insensible to honest praise. The love of approbation is as natural
to every human soul as the love of offspring, or the love of
liberty. It was planted there by God's hand, and it is as useful
and important in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its
flower. I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to
honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a king in the
world, independent of his race, holding dominion over human
hearts, lifted far above the necessity of the plaudits of those
around him, will pause with gratified and grateful ear, to listen
to expressions of approval and admiration from the humblest lips.
The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, if it be
honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that Doctor of Divinity who
weighs two hundred pounds more or less, and is clad in glossy
broad-cloth, and lifts his shining forehead above a white cravat,
as Mont Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated
thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted spectacles, and
moves among men with ineffable dignity, is above the need of, and
the appetite for, praise. Ah! you don't know the soft old heart
under that satin waistcoat! It can be made as warm and gentle and
grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of a boy. Nay,
the barber who takes his reverent nose between his thumb and
finger, and sweeps the beard from his benevolent chin, understands
exactly what to say in order to draw from his pocket an extra
sixpence. There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff,
there is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the
flowers which praise tosses upon its path.
"It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, who is not
praised quite as much as he would like to be. Begging your pardon,
sir, it is no such thing. The strongest Being in the universe--
the God of the universe--is the one who demands, receives, and
accepts the most praise. Listen for a moment to those marvellous
ascriptions which rise to Him from the bosom of Christendom as
ceaselessly and beautifully as clouds from the Heaven-reflecting
ocean: "Thou art the King, immortal, invisible. Thou art the
Source of all life, the Author of all being, the Fountain of all
light and love and joy. Thou art Love itself; Thou art the Sum of
all perfections. For what Thou art, we worship Thee; for what Thou
hast done for us, in Thy infinite loving-kindness, we praise Thee.
We bless Thy Holy Name. We call upon our souls and all within us
to magnify Thy name forever and ever." The Bible itself has given
us almost numberless forms of expression into which we may cast
our divinest adoration, and the broadest outpourings of our
hearts. The poets of all ages have been touched to their finest
utterances in the rapture of worship and of praise.
Now why should God want praise of us? It certainly is not because
He is weak. Can it be because He wishes by means of it to produce
some desired effect in us? Is there no hearing of this praise in
Heaven? Are we who sing and shout mere brawlers, who get a little
strength of lungs by the exercise? There are some poor souls,
doubtless, who believe this, as they believe that prayer has
significance only as a moral exercise, and effect only as it
reacts upon the soul. I believe that praise is pleasant to Him who
sits upon the throne--that the honest and sincere expressions of
love and adoration, and gratitude and praise, that rise to Him
from the earth are at least shining ripples upon the soundless
ocean of His bliss. Out from Him proceed, through myriad channels
of effluence, the expressions of His love for those whom He has
made and endowed with intelligence; and I believe that it is
requisite for His happiness that back along these lines of
manifestation there should flow a tide of grateful recognition and
adoring praise. Even a God would pine in loneliness and despair if
there should come back no echoes to His loving voice--no refluent
wave to the mighty bosom which makes all shores vocal with its
breath and beating. God demands of all men that which all men owe
to Him--that which His perfections and His acts deserve.
This love of approbation in men, then, is Heaven-born and Godlike.
The desire for approbation is as legitimate as the desire for
food. I do not suppose that it should be greatly a motive of
action--perhaps it should never be; but when a man from a good
motive does a good thing, he desires the approval of the hearts
that love him, and he receives their expressions of praise with
grateful pleasure. Nay, if these expressions of praise are denied
to him, he feels in a certain sense wronged. He feels that
justice has not been done him--that there is something due to him
that has not been paid. I met a friend the other day who unveiled
his heart to me; and I caught in the vision his heart's sense of
the world's injustice. He had been a very poor boy, and had been
bred under a poor boy's disadvantages; but a strong will, a good
heart, fine talents, and a favoring fortune, brought to him gold,
and lands, and equipage. They brought these not only, but they
brought the power to be a benefactor of his native town. He won
competence for himself, and then he became a public-spirited
citizen, and did that for his home which no other man had done.
Now he felt that he had done for himself and for those around him
nobly; and it was natural that he should desire some response--
some expression of praise. He did not get it. People either envied
him, or they misconstrued his actions; and he felt that his
townsmen had been and were unjust---that they owed him something
which they had failed to pay.
The world is so much accustomed to confound praise with flattery
that if I were to go to a man with an honest tribute like this:
"My friend, I admire you very much; I think you possess noble
talents, fine tastes, and an excellent heart; and I regard your
course of action and your life with the warmest approval," he
would, nine times in ten, look into my face either with
astonishment, or amusement, or offense. He would not know whether
I intended to insult him or to practice a joke upon him. Praise
between man and man is so rare that we neither know how to bestow
it nor how to receive it. This is carried to such an extent that
one-half of the family life of Christendom is deprived of it. The
husbands who never have a word of praise for their wives, the
wives who never have a word of praise for their husbands, and the
parents who only find fault with their children, are, I fear, in
the majority. I know that the women are numberless who devote
themselves throughout all their life to the comfort, the
happiness, and the prosperity of their husbands, and who lie down
in their graves at last, thirsty for their praise. Their patient
and ceaseless ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the
slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a loving
and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise is due to the love
and unselfish devotion of a wife, just as really as it is to the
loving-kindness and beneficent ministry of God, differing only in
kind and degree. Husbands may die worth millions, and leave it all
to their wives, (subject to the usual contemptible provision that
they do not marry again,) and yet be shamefully indebted to them
forever and forever.
Children are often spoiled because they get no credit for what
they do. Of censure, they get their due; but of praise, never.
They do a thing which they feel to be praiseworthy, but it is not
noticed. When a child takes pains to do well, it feels itself paid
for every endeavor by praise; and the most unsophisticated child
knows when praise is its due. It often comes to its mother's knee
in natural simplicity, and asks for it. It is very well for men to
say that "virtue is its own reward," and that the highest
satisfactions are those which spring from a sense of duty
accomplished; but praise is pleasant and precious to men who not
only say this, but feel it. Many a noble and sensitive pastor is
disheartened because no one of the multitude which he so carefully
and constantly feeds, ever tells him, with an open, honest
utterance, his good opinion of him, and his satisfaction with his
labors. Many an excellent author toils over his work in secret
distrust, and issues it in fear and trembling, feeling that a word
of praise will exalt him into a grateful and fruitful joy, and
that an unjust and unkind criticism will half kill him.
It is true that the mind is unhealthy which lives on praise; and
it is just as true that he is mean and unjust who fails to award
praise to those who earn it. The appetite for praise may become
just as morbid and greedy by improper stimulus and abuse, as any
other natural and legitimate appetite. It frequently does so, in
those who associate it very intimately with success and gain.
Actors and public singers, and all those whose success in life and
whose pecuniary income depend upon the amount of popular praise
they can win, are very apt to become greedy of praise, and will
not unfrequently receive it in its most disgusting forms. There
are lecturers and public speakers who depend upon praise for
strength to speak an hour--men who, if their performances are
repetitions, wait at certain points for applause, as a horse,
travelling over a familiar road, stops always at certain hills to
rest and take breath, and at certain wayside cisterns to drink.
Many of these men demand praise, talking about themselves
continually, and begging assent to their self-laudations. In these
cases, praise becomes the dominant motive, and degrades and
belittles its subjects always. The voluntary profanity and the
impure jests that so often offend the ears of decent people at the
theatre, are put forth to call out a cheer from groundlings whose
praise is always essential disgrace. The jealousy and the
quarrelsomeness of authors, actors, and singers, result from the
fact that praise has become so much the motive of their life that
they grudge the applause awarded to their fellows.
The difference between praise and flattery is as wide as that
between praise and blame. Praise is a legitimate tribute to worth
and worthy doing. It is entirely unselfish in its motive. It is
the discharge of a debt. Flattery originates always in a selfish
motive, and seeks by falsehood to feed an unhealthy desire for
praise. A man whom it is proper to praise cannot be flattered, and
a man who can be flattered ought not to be praised. It is always
safe to praise a man who really deserves praise. Such a man
usually knows how much he deserves, and will take only the exact
amount. Indeed, he will be very particular to give back the right
change. The flatterer is like the man who stands behind a bar to
deal out poison to a debased appetite for gain. The man who utters
honest praise is noble; the man who receives it does so without
humiliation, and is made strong by it. The flatterer is always a
scoundrel, and the glad receiver of his falsehoods is always a
fool--natural or otherwise.
The desire for praise is often very strong in those who never do
any thing to deserve it, and who are never ready to award it to
those who have earned it. There are men in every community who are
universally recognized as supremely selfish, yet supremely greedy
of praise. This desire does not arise from over-indulgence in the
article, for they never had even a taste of it. They are known to
be selfish and hard and mean, yet they long for praise and
popularity, with a desire that is almost ludicrous. They never
give a dollar to the poor, they never deny themselves for the good
of others, they are shut up in themselves--without any good or
great or generous qualities--yet they clutch at every word that
sounds like praise as if they were starved. The only use of the
desire in these men is to furnish the world with a nose by which
to lead them.
It is a mistake to suppose that praise should be rendered directly
in all cases to the persons to whom it is due, for the relations
between debtor and creditor may be such as to forbid it. I may be
a humble admirer of some great and good man, who has been the doer
of great and good deeds, but my personal relations to him may be
such that it is not proper for me to approach him, and pay my
tribute into his hands. Men are often careful of the channels
through which the response to their deeds, in the hearts of other
men, reaches them; but I may discharge my debt, nevertheless, by
sounding their praise in other ears. It is usually the work of
those who stand next to a man, to gather up the tributes of a
grateful and admiring community or people, and bear them to him to
whom they belong. Because I may not approach a praiseworthy man,
with the offering which I feel to be his due, it is none the less
incumbent upon me to discharge the debt. Just and generous praise
will come from every just and generous nature in some form, and
will be deposited in some bosom subject to the draft of the owner.
It is not easy for any man to work alone, out of the sight of
his fellows, and beyond the recognition of his deeds. However
self-sufficient he may be, he is stronger, and he feels stronger,
in the approbation of generous and appreciative hearts. We are very
much in the habit of thinking that men of great minds and noble
deeds and self-reliant natures do not need the approval of other
minds, and do not care for it; but God never lifted any man so far
above his fellows that their voices were not the most delightful
sounds that reached him. If this be true of great natures, how
much more evidently true is it of smaller natures! We, the people
of the world, go leaning on each other; and we totter sometimes,
even to falling, when a shoulder drops from underneath our hand.
We need encouragement with every step. In the path of worthy
doing, we need some loving voice to witness with our approving
consciences, that we have done that which becomes us as men and
women. We long to hear the sentence, "well done, thou good and
faithful servant," from day to day; and when we hear it, we are
ready for further labor. We need also to give this daily meed of
praise to those who deserve it, that we may keep ourselves
unselfish, and root out from ourselves all niggardliness. We owe
it to ourselves to pay off every debt as soon as it is incurred,
and never, under any selfish motive, to withhold it.
It is notorious that the finest spirits of the world, and the
world's greatest benefactors, have gone through life unrecognized.
They have lain down in their graves at last without having
received a tithe of the debt which their generation owed to them.
When the turf has closed over their bosoms, and the mean
jealousies of their cotemporaries have been vanquished by death,
then whole nations have thronged to do them honor. Songs have been
sung to their memory; and the words of praise which would have
done so much to cheer and strengthen them once, are poured out in
abundance when the need of them is past. Stately monuments are
erected to them, and their children are petted and caressed, and a
tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world strives to win self-respect
by the payment of a debt long overdue. "Speak nothing but good of
the dead" is a proverb that had its birth in the world's sense of
its own meanness,--the consciousness that it had not done justice
to the dead while they were living. Many a man is systematically
abused during all his active life, only to lie down in his grave
amid the laudations of a nation. I know of nothing in all the
exhibitions of human nature meaner than this. It amounts to a
virtual confession of fraud. It is the acknowledgment of a debt,
which, while the creditor could get any benefit from it, the world
refused to pay. Posthumous fame may be a very fine thing; but I
have never known a really worthy man, with a healthy nature and a
healthy character, who did not prize far above it the love, the
confidence, and the praise of the generation to which he gave his
life.
It is the mark of a noble nature to be quick to recognize that
which is praiseworthy in others, and ready on the moment to award
to it its fitting meed. Such a nature looks for that which is good
in men, sees it, encourages it, and gives it the strength of its
indorsal. All that is noble in other men thrives in the presence
of such a nature as this. It is sunshine and showers and healthful
breezes to all that is amiable and laudable in the souls around
it. Woman grows more womanly and lovable and happy in its
presence. Men grow heroic and unselfish by its side. Children
gather from it encouragement and inspiration, and impulse and
direction into a beautiful life. What knows the charming wife whom
we lay in the tomb, of the tears we shed above her, of the
endearments we lavish upon her memory, and of the praises of her
virtue with which we burden the ears of our friends? This same
wife would have drunk such expressions during her life with
satisfaction and gratification beyond expression. Why can death
alone teach us that those whom we love are dear? Why must they be
placed forever beyond our sight before our lips can be unsealed?
Why must it be that in our public, social, and family life we have
penalties in abundance, but no rewards--censure in profusion, but
no praise--fault-finding without stint of freedom, but approbation
dealt out by constrained and niggardly hands?
LESSON XX.
UNNECESSARY BURDENS.
"I groan beneath this cowardice of heart
Which rolls the evil to be borne to-day
Upon to-morrow, loading it with gloom."
ALEXANDER SMITH.
"There are two ways of escaping from suffering; the one by
rising above the causes of conflict, the other by sinking below
them; for there is quiet in the soul when all its faculties are
harmonized about any centre. The one is the religious method; the
other is the vulgar, worldly method. The one is called Christian
elevation; the other, stoicism."--BEECHER.
There were few houses of the old time in New England that did not
contain a well-thumbed volume of the Pilgrim's Progress; and there
were few children who did not become acquainted with its contents,
either through its text or its pictures. I am sure that all the
children felt as I did--very tired with sympathy for the poor
pilgrim who was obliged to lug that ugly pack from picture to
picture, and very "glad and lightsome" when at last it fell from
his shoulders, and went tumbling down the hill. We did not marvel
that "he stood still awhile, to look and wonder," or that "he
looked, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his
head sent the waters down his cheeks." It was a great thing for a
man who was bent on progress to be freed from an unnecessary
burden; and it may be pleasant to know that at the foot of the
hill of life the same sepulchre which swallowed the burden of
Bunyan's Pilgrim, so that he "saw it no more," still stands open,
and has room in it for all the burdens of all the pilgrims there
are in the world.