hat
they are bound, as the Apostle says, to 'provide things honest in the
sight of all men.' It is a reasonable and right requirement that they
should 'have a good report of them that are without.' Be content to be
tried by a high standard, and do not wonder, and do not forget that
there are keen eyes watching your conduct, in your home, in your
relations to your friends, in your business, in your public life, which
would weep no tears, but might gleam with malicious satisfaction, if
they saw inconsistencies in you. Remember it, and shape your lives so
that they may be disappointed.

If a minister falls into any kind of inconsistency or sin, if a
professing Christian makes a bad failure in Manchester, what a talk
there is, and what a pointing of fingers! We sometimes think it is hard;
it is all right. It is just what should be meted out to us. Let us
remember that unslumbering tribunal which sits in judgment upon all our
professions, and is very ready to condemn, and very slow to acquit.

III. Notice, again, the unblemished record.

These men could find no fault, 'forasmuch as Daniel was faithful.'
Neither was there any error'--of judgment, that is,--'or
fault'--dereliction of duty, that is,--'found in him.' They were very
poor judges of his religion, and they did not try to judge that; but
they were very good judges of his conduct as prime minister, and they
did judge that. The world is a very poor critic of my Christianity, but
it is a very sufficient one of my conduct. It may not know much about
the inward emotions of the Christian life, and the experiences in which
the Christian heart expatiates and loves to dwell, but it knows what
short lengths, and light weights, and bad tempers, and dishonesty, and
selfishness are. And it is by our conduct, in the things that they and
we do together, that worldly men judge what we are in the solitary
depths where we dwell in communion with God. It is useless for
Christians to be talking, as so many of them are fond of doing, about
their spiritual experiences and their religious joy, and all the other
sweet and sacred things which belong to the silent life of the spirit in
God, unless, side by side with these, there is the doing of the common
deeds which the world is actually able to appraise in such a fashion as
to extort, even from them, the confession, 'We find no occasion against
this man.'

You remember the pregnant, quaint old saying, 'If a Christian man is a
shoeblack