It were better for a preacher to turn highwayman, and rob men with a club and a strong hand, than, with smiles and smooth words and feigned and fawning affection, to rob them with flattery, while their poor souls, neglected and deceived, go down to Hell. How will he meet them in the Day of Judgment, and look into their horrorstricken faces, realising that he played and toyed with their fancies and affections and pride to get money, and, instead of faithfully warning them and seeking to save them, with flattering words fattened their souls for destruction! Not so did Paul. "I seek not yours, but you," he wrote the Corinthians. It was not their money, but their souls he wanted. But such faithful love will be able to command all men have to give. Why, to some of his converts he wrote: "I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me" (Gal. iv. 15). But he sought not to please them with flattering words, only to save them. So faithful was he in this matter, and so conscious of his integrity, that he called God Himself into the witness-box. "God is witness," says he. Blessed is the man who can call on God to witness for him; and that man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in fullness can do this. Can you, my brother? 5. He was _not vain-glorious, nor dictatorial, nor oppressive_. Some men care nothing for money, but they care mightily for power and place and the glory that men give. But Paul was free from this spiritual itching. Listen to him: "Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome" (or "used authority") "as the Apostles of Christ." Said Solomon, "For men to seek their own glory is not glory," it is only vain-glory. "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" asked Jesus. From all this Paul was free, and so is every man who is full of the Holy Ghost. And it is only as we are thus free that with the whole heart and with a single eye we can devote ourselves to the work of saving men. 6. With all his boldness and faithfulness he was _gentle_. "We were gentle among you," he says, "as a nurse cherisheth her children." The fierce hurricane which casts down the giant trees of the forest is not so mighty as the gentle sunshine, which, from tiny seeds and acorns, lifts aloft the towering spires of oak and fir on a thousand hills and mountains. The wild storm that lashes the sea into foam and fury is feeble compared to the gentle, yet immeasurably powerful influence, which twice a day swings the oceans in resistless tides from shore to shore.