When we idly busy ourselves
about beautiful expressions and the composition and harmony of our
sentences in order that we might not profit; when we make it our aim to
be admired, not to instruct; to delight, not prick to the heart; to be
applauded and depart with praise, not to correct men's manners, we do
wrong. Believe me, I speak what I feel, when as I discourse, I hear
myself applauded, at the moment I feel it as a man; I am delighted and
give way to the pleasurable feeling; but when I get home and bethink me
that those who applauded received no benefit from my discourse, but
whatever benefit they ought to have got they lost it while applauding
and praising, I am in pain, and groan and weep, and feel as if I had
spoken all in vain. I say to myself what profit comes to me from my
labors, while the hearers do not choose to benefit by what they hear
from me?
Even the heathen philosophers--we hear of their discoursing, and
nowhere do we find that noisy applause accompanied their words; we hear
of the apostles making public speeches, and yet nowhere do the accounts
add that in the midst of their discourses the hearers interrupted the
speaker with loud expressions of approbation.
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