The desire of praise is a constant encouragement to the practice of the natural virtues. Sin enters when praise is sought for doing what is unreasonable, or when we take all the credit of good conduct to ourselves, forgetting that our very goodness is a gift of God. For this is blamed by St. Paul: “What hast thou that thou hast not received? and if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?” (I Cor. iv, 7). There is unfortunately plenty of sin in the world; but we must avoid increasing it by forming false consciences. Yet, even when reasonable praise is sought, and no sin committed, there may be great evil in the loss of merit for Heaven; and the imitation of Christ will teach us to avoid that evil. He acted in all things for the glory of His Heavenly Father. “I seek not my own glory,” He said to the Jews; and again: “He that sends me is with me,—for I do always the things that please him” (St. John viii, 50, 29). By imitating the Saviour in this, we become more and more like unto Him, and we lay up abundant treasures for Heaven. But He earnestly warns us not to lose such precious merit, saying: “Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you shall not have reward of your Father, who is in Heaven” (St. Matth. vi, 1). And speaking, in the next verse of the hypocrites who gave alms that they might be seen by men, the Saviour adds: “They have received their reward.” But the loss of supernatural reward is not the only evil resulting from the seeking of human praise; for, though, as we have seen, seeking such honor is not in itself a sin, still it is very often the cause of sin, even of mortal sin. For praise is very apt to affect the mind somewhat as intoxicants affect the body; it arouses an inordinate greed of more and more of the stimulant. The more we get of it, the more are various passions aroused within us, and we are likely to become ambitious of honor and of superiority over others, conceited and contemptuous of others, becoming infatuated with our supposed good qualities; in a word we gradually become proud, and a proud man is an abomination to the Lord, or, as St. Luke expresses it: “That which is high to men is an abomination before God” (xvi, 15). IV A third cause that made the life of Christ so holy was that _He did everything perfectly well_: “He hath done all things well” (St. Mark vii, 37). Our goodness does not consist so much in what we do as in the manner in which we do it. In fact, during the thirty years of His private life, which we are now studying, Christ did no great things whatever. His occupations were of the humblest kind; millions of men are doing the same day after day; but His actions derived their excellence from the perfection wherewith He did them, and our goodness consists in imitating His perfect manner of acting.