is not for
the sake of the reputation that he may thereby win.

Now, the direct tendency of Christian faith and principle is to
dwindle into wholesome insignificance the multitudinous voice of
men's judgments. For, if I understand at all what Christianity means,
it means centrally and essentially this, that I am brought into
loving personal relation with Jesus Christ, and draw from Him the
power of my life, and from Him the law of my life, and from Him the
stimulus of my life, and from Him the reward of my life. If there is
a direct communication between me and Him, and if I am deriving from
Him the life that He gives, which is 'free from the law of sin and
death,' I shall have little need or desire to heed the judgment that
men, who see only the surface, may pass upon me, and upon my doings,
and I shall refer myself to Him instead of to them. Those who can go
straight to Christ, whose lives are steeped in Him, who feel that
they draw all from Him, and that their actions and character are
moulded by His touch and His Spirit, are responsible to no other
tribunal. And the less they think about what men have to say of them
the stronger, the nobler, the more Christ-like they will be.

There is no need for any contempt or roughness to blend with such a
putting aside of men's judgments. The velvet glove may be worn upon
the iron hand. All meekness and lowliness may go with this wholesome
independence, and must go with it unless that independence is false
and distorted. 'With me it is a very small thing to be judged of you,
or of man's judgment,' need not be said in such a tone as to mean 'I
do not care a rush what you think about me'; but it must be said in
such a tone as to mean 'I care supremely for one approbation, and if
I have that I can bear anything besides.'

Let me appeal to you to cultivate more distinctly, as a plain
Christian duty, this wholesome independence of men's judgment. I
suppose there never was a day when it was more needed that men should
be themselves, seeing with their own eyes what God may reveal
to them and they are capable of receiving, and walking with their own
feet on the path that fits them, whatsoever other people may say
about it. For the multiplication of daily literature, the way in
which we are all living in glass houses nowadays--everybody knowing
everything about everybody else, and delighting in the gossip which
takes the place of literature in so many quarters--and the tendency
of