It is the virtue of teachers to seek not honour nor glory from their disciples, but their salvation, and to do all things unto that end; for he who seeks the former would be a tyrant, not a teacher. It was not for your greater personal glorification that God set you over them, but that your business should be forgotten whilst theirs is strengthened. This is a teacher’s part; this was what blessed Paul did, who was removed from vanity and considered himself as one of the multitude, or rather as the least of all. Thus he calls himself their slave, and generally speaks in the attitude of a suppliant. Look at him, at least in this instance, writing nothing imperiously, nothing authoritatively, but mild, conciliating words. _I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called_, he says. Tell me, what do you beseech, O Paul? That you may get something for yourself? ‘Certainly not,’ he answers, ‘but that I may save others.’ Yet they who beseech do it for what concerns themselves. ‘And this does concern me,’ he says, ‘as I have written distinctly in another place: _Now we live, if you stand in the Lord_.’ He was always most eager for the salvation of his disciples. _I, the prisoner in the Lord._ Great and wonderful dignity, surpassing consulships, and kingdoms, and all things else. This he wrote also to Philemon, saying: _As Paul, an old man, and_ _now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ_. Nothing is so glorious as a chain for Christ’s sake, as the fetters which hang round those hallowed hands. Better than being an apostle, or a teacher, or an evangelist, is it to be a prisoner for Christ’s sake. If there be a lover of Christ, he will know what I say;[11] if any man be foolish and on fire for his Lord, he understands the power of chains, he would choose to be a prisoner for Christ rather than to dwell in paradise. Paul has shown us those hands of his more glittering than gold or than any royal crown. A band of precious stones does not ennoble a head as iron chains for Christ’s sake. _His_ prison was more glorious than kingly palaces, or than heaven itself. Why do I say ‘than palaces’? That place contained Christ’s prisoner. A lover of Christ knows what this privilege is, he is acquainted with this virtue, he knows what a gain the being in chains for His sake has been to the human race. More glorious far than sitting on His right hand, more solemn than sitting on one of the twelve thrones, is the being imprisoned for His sake. And why do I speak of human things? I shame to put riches and golden ornament in comparison with those chains, but with regard to those great ones, if their deed had no reward, this alone is a great reward and a powerful antidote, the suffering these evils on account of the Beloved. Lovers, I say not of God but of man, know the proverb which speaks of those who take pleasure rather in suffering evils from the loved ones than in being honoured by them.