will be as black with ill-will
as his is. But that must not again be. Would you hate or strike back at
a blind man who stumbled and fell against you on the street? Would you
retaliate at a maniac who gnashed his teeth and shook his fist at you on
his way past you to the madhouse? Or at a corpse being carried past you
that had been too long without burial? And shall you retaliate on a
miserable man driven mad with diabolical passion? Or at a poor sinner
whose heart is as rotten as the grave? Ill-will is abroad in our learned
and religious city at all hours of the day and night. He glares at us
under the sun by day, and under the street lamps at night. We suddenly
feel his baleful eye on us as we thoughtlessly pass under his overlooking
windows: it will be a side street and an unfrequented, where you will not
be ashamed and shocked and pained at heart to meet him. Public men; much
purchased and much praised men; rich and prosperous men; men high in
talent and in place; and, indeed, all manner of men,--walk abroad in this
life softly. Keep out of sight. Take the side streets, and return home
quickly. You have no idea what an offence and what a snare you are to
men you know, and to men you do not know. If you are a public man, and
if your name is much in men's mouths, then the place you hold, the prices
and the praises you get, do not give you one-tenth of the pleasure that
they give a thousand other men pain. Men you never heard of, and who
would not know you if they met you, gnaw their hearts at the mere mention
of your name. Desire, then, to be unknown, as A Kempis says. O teach me
to love to be concealed, prays Jeremy Taylor. Be ambitious to be
unknown, Archbishop Leighton also instructs us. And the great Fenelon
took _Ama nesciri_ for his crest and for his motto. No wonder that an
apostle cried out under the agony and the shame of ill-will. No wonder
that to kill it in the hearts of men the Son of God died under it on the
cross. And no wonder that all the gates of hell are wide open, day and
night, for there is no day there, to receive home all those who will
entertain ill-will in their hearts, and all the gates of heaven shut
close to keep all ill-will for ever out.

3. But, bad enough as all that is, the half has not been told, and never
will be told in this life. Butler has a passage that has long stumbled
me, and it stumbles me the more the longer I live and study him and
observe myself. 'Re