the whole standard of action. We readily become what will receive praise, what will be accepted, and what will sound well in the mouths of men. It is as debilitating mentally and spiritually, as dram-drinking physically. The constant danger is that we make others our conscience, and ask not what is right, what is well-pleasing to God, what is consistent with rectitude, but what others will say of us. We judge ourselves not by a rigid standard of right, but by the flexible one of fleeting opinion. The weak character cannot stand alone; cannot live out of the sunshine; and withers before the east wind of criticism.

For true living we need a higher standard than the praise of men. To serve God a man must be ready, if need be, to do without the sweet savour of popular acclaim. It is the demagogue, to whom applause is the breath of his nostrils. Here, too, we must learn from our Master, who was unmoved by the plaudits of the mob. He knew what value to put on them. Steadfastly He pursued His course of good, and did not alter His determination to go on with His work, though He knew that the shouts of Hosannah would change to the hoarse cries of rage and hate. Some of this independence of praise or blame, this aloofness of temper, enabling a man to stand firm, is needed in every strong character. All really great men have

had it. To keep a conscience void of offence to God and to men, a man must be willing to dispense with praise, must be willing to suffer, must have some of the stuff of the martyrs in him, like St. Stephen,

Who heeded not reviling tones,

Nor sold his heart to idle moans,

Tho' cursed and scorned, and bruised with stones;
But looking upward, full of grace.

He prayed, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him in the face.

This is the secret of true independence-the praise of God, not the praise of men. If we stopped to ask not what men thought of us but what God thinks of us, we would be saved from weak complacency on the one hand, and from bitter loveless pride on the other. For, this independence of which we speak, is not a proud consciousness of right, a self-centred faith which enables a man to dispense with outside help and resent outside interference. Such an attitude hardens a man, and makes him contemptuous. It is not the self-centred life which is the true life; but the God-centred life, which turns to God as the flower turns to the light. The weakness of these rulers was that men were more real to them than God; and naturally they yielded to the strongest influence. But if your heart is fixed on God, if to please Him and do His will is the bent of

your life; though all the world condemn, it is enough that He commends: though it is hard to do without the encouragement of our brethren, it is harder still to do without the smile of our heavenly Father; however desolate it is to stand alone, with Him they that be with us are more than they that be against us: like our blessed Lord, however misunderstood on earth it is enough to be understood in heaven: however reviled by men it is enough to be praised by God. He hides us in the secret of His presence from the pride of man; He keeps us secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.

XIV

THE SHAME OF DETECTION

As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed.-JEREMIAH ii. 26.

THE prophet is accusing the nation of apostasy, of unfaithfulness to her true Spouse. To awaken repentance he points to the base ingratitude which could forget the early days of their history when God espoused them, in love and favour brought them up out of the land of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, and brought them into a plentiful country. He points next to the wilful and wicked obstinacy which made them forsake God and choose the lower worship and the lower moral practice of heathenism. And here he points to the folly of it. Besides its ingratitude and its wickedness, it is also unspeakably foolish, an insensate stupidity at which the heavens might well be astonished, not only that a nation should change its God, who had taken them by the arms and in endless love and pity taught them to walk, but that it should change Him for such other gods—that Israel should have given Jehovah

such pitiful rivals. This is the folly at which the heavens may be amazed, that my people "have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." To a monotheist who had grasped the principle of the One God, and who had experience of spiritual communion, polytheism with its lords many and gods many, must have seemed a system almost beneath contempt. Intellectually it introduced confusion instead of order: morally it meant that life would be lived on a much lower plane: religiously it was the degradation of the pure spiritual worship to which the prophets pointed the people.

This is why the prophets always speak of the shame of idolatry. It seemed incredible that men in their senses should prefer what appeared to them to be brutish superstition. Both intellectually and morally it was a disgrace. Especially the prophets of the exile and after it, who had come into close connection with heathen idolatry, had this sense of superiority, and withered the stupidity of polytheism with their most mordant irony. It was shame, at which they blushed, to think of Jews descending to such puerile worship and practices. It was folly for the heathen who knew no better: it was shame for Israelites to grovel before a stock or stone. The