tion and judgment-nay, that they continue to be honoured and blessed in a thousand ways. This is the fact that keenly troubles most noble yet erring souls. Let us, however, leave all our sins with Him who abundantly pardons. "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens."

XXXII

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE

DISAGREEABLE

So then am I become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?-GAL. iv. 16.

N

OT long ago we had a most dismal summer season, and the papers reported that it witnessed a record pawning of barometers. People got depressed by looking at the face of the instrument, the hand of which invariably indicated a continuance of unsettled weather. So when money ran short, and it was found necessary to part with something, the barometer was the first item to be selected. Some pawnbrokers, it was said, had such a glut in these pledges that they declined to advance money on any more. This funny episode in the human comedy condenses into a quaint image an undeniable feature of our poor nature-an impatience with whatever thrusts upon us unwelcome truth.

International criticism is usually resented and retorted. In a speech at Calcutta University Lord Curzon treated the native students to some plain speaking about the besetting Oriental tendency to take liberties with the truth. This was more than the self-love of the Bengali could bear, and forthwith the native news

papers teemed with invective; no sooner did the quicksilver fall than the barometer lost its popularity. The Cretans would not prize the native instrument whose index finger fastened on their national failing, nor would the apostle have been popular who gave his testimony to its verdict. And this is the usual consequence of international candour.

Not long ago a distinguished Metropolitan minister suggested that a section of the working classes was specially lacking in industry, temperance, and godliness; the impeachment was promptly and indignantly resented, stones were thrown, and the barometer came near to being smashed. If the rich do not with equal demonstration repudiate criticism, it must be owing to the fact that long ago they sent the steadily unflattering glass to the pawnbroker, supposing they ever dispose of things in that quarter. The various religious denominations do not relish neighbourly analysis and advice. And so far as concerns the individual, to see ourselves as others see us is rarely reckoned a privilege. We are usually hugely offended when our personal defects in grammar, pronunciation, manners, or matters of similar import are corrected; and the annoyance is yet more intense when the deeper imperfections of our character are challenged. Few can bear with anything like good nature any hint of their serious infirmities.

We decline practically to listen to our friends. "Am I become your enemy, because I deal truly with you?" The Galatians received the apostle as an angel of God when he came with a general message of grace; yet he no sooner ventured to remonstrate with them on

account of their error and prejudice than they harshly withstood him. Whilst our friends administer syrups, they charm; but we suspect their species the moment we catch the smatch of a tonic in their intercourse. And with most of us it is entirely out of the question that we should be willing to be taught by our enemy. The excuses tendered for resenting criticism are amusingly ingenious and sophistical. The suggestion of our fault was unseasonable; the spirit in which it was made was not nice; our alleged failing was exaggerated; the critic ought first to have taken the beam out of his own eye. By a thousand transparent demurs we rob ourselves of the benefit of current personal admonition.

Are we not extremely inconsistent and foolish in this touchiness and resentment? We are not irritable after this sort if there is any chance of the removal of blemishes in our personal appearance of bodily health. We treat handsomely the artist who frees us from a wart, smooths out a wrinkle, or refines away a mole or freckle; the physician who puts his finger on the spot and testifies, "Thou ailest here and here," excites gratitude, not anger; why, then, should we turn away with wounded pride and displeasure from any mirror which presumes to throw back upon us reflections of our moral self? It is quite true that critics sometimes do us scant justice. The Japanese have metal mirrors with properties which ordinary looking-glasses do not possess; on the back of the metal is a figure which, owing to the process of polishing, is reflected on anything when the sun shines upon the surface of the mirror. So our critics do not always reflect our true

likeness, but a perverse image they have formed of us at the back of their mind. If this is so, it is to our advantage. If faithfully we satisfy ourselves that the impeaching mirrors are not true, so much the better; but if they are true, how irrational it is to banish them. Even when the truth is urged upon us unseasonably, tactlessly, or harshly, we are not the less interested in it. Emerson says: "The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point." The discipline of the disagreeable is far too precious to be rejected. In some of the training colleges for Roman Catholic priests it is said to be a rule to force the novices to practise the particular things they most dislike; and many of us would be all the better were we to practise the particular duties we most resent, and to listen impatiently to the sermons we find most distasteful.

Few suffer more seriously or manifestly in temper and character than do the men and women who, for one reason or another, are exempt from frank, candid, honest criticism; their privileged lot is really cruel in the extreme. To pawn the barometer or to banish the mirror is gratuitously to deliver ourselves up to foolish and fatal notions. We go to church and listen to large, eloquent discourses which by no accident touch our personal weaknesses, and we come away little the better for the splendid oration; but those faithful personal and domestic criticisms which are all application may prove infinitely more to our advantage. The ministry of the disagreeable is a much under-valued means of grace, yet it would often profit more than the golden