which high-bred horses have of
becoming utterly unmanageable, not so much from bodily fear, as from
being confounded, not knowing what people want them to do--that is the
very sign, the very effect, of their superior organization: and more
shame to those who ill-use such horses. If God, my friends, dealt with
us as cruelly and as clumsily as too many men deal with their horses, He
would not be long in driving us mad with terror and shame and confusion.
But He remembers our frame; He knoweth whereof we are made, and
remembereth that we are but dust: else the spirit would fail before Him,
and the souls which He hath made. And to Him we can cry, even when we
know that we have made fools of ourselves--Father who made me, Christ who
died for me, Holy Spirit who teachest me, have patience with my stupidity
and my ignorance. Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be
confounded.

But some will tell us--It is a sign of weakness to feel shame. Why
should you care for the opinion of your fellow-men? If you are doing
right, what matter what they say of you?

Yes, my friends, if you are doing right. But if you are not doing
right--What then?

If you have only been fancying that you are doing right, and suspect
suddenly that you have been very likely doing wrong--What then?

When a man tells me that he does not care what people think of him; that
they cannot shame him: in the first place, I do not quite believe that he
is speaking truth; and in the next place, I hope he is _not_ speaking
truth. I hope--for his own sake--that he does care what people think of
him: or else I must suspect him of being very dull or very conceited.

And if he tells me that the old prophets, and holy, and just, and heroic
men in all ages, never cared for people's laughing at them and despising
them, provided they were doing right according to their own conscience: I
answer--That he knows nothing about the matter; that he has not honestly
read the writings of these men. I say that the Psalmist who wrote Ps.
119, was a man, on his own shewing, intensely open to the feeling of
shame, and felt intensely what men said of him; felt intensely slander
and insult. We talk of independent and true patriots now-a-days. I will
tell you of four of the noblest patriots the world ever saw, who were men
of that stamp. I say that Isaiah was such a man; that Jeremiah was such
a man; that Ezekiel was such a man; that their writings shew that they
felt int