till you have wholly extirpated your appetite for praise. Put your foot
upon it, put it out of your heart. Stop fishing for it, and when you see
it coming, turn away and stop your ears against it. And should it still
insinuate itself, at any rate do not repeat to others what has already so
flattered and humbled and weakened you. Telling it to others will only
humble and weaken you more. By repeating the praise that you have heard
or read about yourself you only expose yourself and purchase
well-deserved contempt for yourself. And, more than that, by fishing for
praise you lay yourself open to all sorts of flatterers. Honest men, men
who truly respect and admire you, will show you their dignified regard
and appreciation of you and your work by their silence; while your leaky
slaves will crowd around you with floods of praise that they know well
will please and purchase you. And when you cannot with all your arts
squeeze a drop out of those who love and honour you, gallons will be
poured upon you by those who have respect neither for themselves nor for
you. Faugh! Flee from flatterers, and take up only with sternly true
and faithful men. "I am much less regardful," says Richard Baxter, "of
the approbation of men, and set much lighter store by their praise and
their blame, than I once did. All worldly things appear most vain and
unsatisfying to those who have tried them most. But while I feel that
this has had some hand in my distaste for man's praise, yet it is the
increasing impression on my heart of man's nothingness and God's
transcendent greatness; it is the brevity and vanity of all earthly
things, taken along with the nearness of eternity;--it is all this that
has at last lifted me above the blame and the praise of men."

To conclude; let us make up our mind and determine to pass on to God on
the spot every syllable of praise that ever comes to our eyes or our
ears--if, in this cold, selfish, envious, and grudging world, any
syllable of praise ever should come to us. Even if pure and generous and