"When one knows the little one does of oneself, and any one praises you, I, at any rate, have a rising, which is a suppressed 'You lie.' There are several nice bits in our Lord's life, when He replied with some unpalatable truth to those men who would follow Him, and would make much of Him, but afterwards they entirely changed their demeanour." At one time he used, for the same reason, to avoid reading all newspapers, as they contained so much praise of him. Writing in 1882, when he was Governor-General of the Soudan, he says:-- "I have come to a conclusion; may God give me strength to keep it! _Stop all the newspapers._ It is no use mincing the matter; as the disease is dire, so also must be the remedy.... Newspapers feed a passion _I_ have for giving my opinion; therefore, as we have no right to judge and have nothing to do with this world (of which we are not), this feeding must be cut short. "The giving up the papers may cause the starvation of my passion for politics, and that scab may drop off. God has shown me what the scabs are:--Evil-speaking, lying, slandering, back-biting, scoffing, self-conceit, boasting, silly talking, and some few more. "I wish friends would not send me papers, &c. I pass them on to ----, who is my waste-paper basket!" Not only did he combat that part of his nature which loved the praise of men, he also sternly resisted the temptation of ambition. For instance, he writes:-- "I wonder if I look ambitious in your eyes. Do you think I sought this place? You should know better than most people, for you have all my thoughts in my letters. Judging myself, I fear it was so when I took the work in hand; not that I cared for the money or the honours to come from it. I think, however, my main idea was the Quixotic one--to help the Khedive, mixed with the feeling that I could, with God's direction, accomplish this work. "... There is death in the seeking of high posts on this earth for the purpose of what the world calls doing great things; the mightiest of men are flies on a wheel; a kind word to a crossing-sweeper delights Christ _in him_, as much as it would delight Christ _in_ a queen." He was conscious, too, of a natural tendency to judge his neighbours. Like many reformers, he had a critical nature, and often found himself led into temptation through it. He never screened this failing, and did his utmost to fight against it. There are several extracts from his letters on this besetting sin. Witness these two:-- "What troubles me immensely is the way in which circumstances force me into society, for in it is the great evil of judging others, picking them to pieces behind their backs, so entirely mean and contrary to our Lord's will. All this tends to make a cloud between Him and us; and yet I declare I cannot see how I can avoid it."