When a teacher forgets his true work and begins to work for admiration, when he makes efforts to show his pupils how clever he is, and how much more he knows than they, he is like the salt that lost its Savor--good for nothing.

      When a preacher is taken up with his reputation, and works to make an impression, and to have it said of him that he is a great and learned and powerful man, he loses all his worth. Besides, he is pursuing small game; for what if he gains his end? People speak in highest terms of a man to-day and forget him to-morrow. Next day they may hiss him. Is it worth while?

      The heart feels more than it knows. If you are a man-pleaser, a flatterer--if you are self-seeking in your work, courting smiles when you should woo souls, grasping at recognition and glory when you should snatch brands from the burning, you may earn the praise of men's lips for a season, but their hearts will despise you. On the other hand, if you are true to God and to yourself and your fellow-men, they may condemn you with their lips, but in their souls they will respect you. Strange dual beings, men are! They may not know why, they may not be conscious of it sufficiently themselves to even state the fact, but the heart of the most ignorant, even of a child, feels genuineness and distinguishes it from falseness, and discriminates twixt love and selfishness. On the surface is the flesh, boisterous and blustering, applauding what pleases it, condemning what opposes; [69] but beneath is the truer tribunal, the' higher self. When the storm of carnal passions has ceased, it asserts itself. So it happens that though it is

      yet "that scaffold sways the future," while the throne falls into night and nothingness. Deal with the hearts of men, not with their flesh or their carnal minds. Behind every human eye sits an awful judge who will justify or condemn you according to your real deserts. If you want real power and abiding praise, you must be true and unselfish. "He that rebuketh a man shall afterward find more favor than he that flattereth with his tongue" (Prov. xxviii. 23).

[TAG 69-70]