"But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honour which comes from men, but the honour which comes from God only!' True, they do stand, and our Lord's fact stands also, the fact that He has created every child to be educated by an honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. And it does solve it; and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same fallacy as the old ascetic one. 'We must love God alone, therefore we must love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently 'He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider this, you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires that person's esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is our highest state. Therefore, in our highest state, we shall desire all men's esteem. Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in Christmas-day; if we believe in Whitsunday, we shall believe that Christ is in all men, that God's spirit is abroad in the earth, and therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and calumny of men will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so; and, on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing good deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be signs and warrants to us that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that 'honour and glory' which Paul promises again and again, with no such scruples as yours, to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God within us; but we shall remember that there is also a voice of God without us, which we must listen to; and that in a Christian land, _vox populi_, patiently and discriminately listened to, is sure to be found not far off from the _vox Dei_.