"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?
[The end]
Timothy Titcomb's essay: The Influence Of Praise