ot so much as lift
up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah,
dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if
we know ourselves as we are.

Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and
having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us
that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our
pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you
get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when
you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and
where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a
fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close
valley, is smoothed down, and brought to one uniform level; and from
the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.

I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was
ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the
bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between
the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as
measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the
distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live
near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and
the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the
man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be
delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as
though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I
follow after.'

But there is another advice to be given--cultivate the habit of thinking
about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always
trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor
effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice--live with your
_betters_. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a
sermon, makes a speech--all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say
what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in
the great works of the _great_ men, and he finds out what a poor little
dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with
bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount--and you may
take a very liberal discount off--either the praises or the censures of
the people round you. Let us rat