Bravos Versus Bread.
In a Chicago cemetery a crowd had gathered for the dedication of a monument in memory of a marine killed at Vera Cruz. He had lived in Chicago, and his patriotic fellow citizens were eager to honor him. As the orator of the day was eloquently holding forth, from the crowd came a harsh challenge: "I'll stop this thing if I have to fight to do it!" The interrupter was the brother of the dead hero. He came forward and simply told the crowd of the poverty in the home that the soldier had left, the aged parents being in dire need. That was all, but it stopped the dedication. Honors to the dead were instantly seen to be a hollow mockery while the living were left uncared for. The orator and his friends went away, it is to be hoped, to transmute their unspoken praise of the departed hero into bread and meat for the old father and mother who gave him birth. The incident is a notable illustration of the Lord's saying, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."
Is Praise Hurtful?
He was speaking eloquently in dispraise of praise.
"How many times," he was saying, "when I have been fighting a tendency to pride, when I have been trying to cultivate the Christian grace of humility, after I have finished making an address someone has come up and by his praise of me has renewed the temptation to think of myself more highly than I ought to think, and has made tenfold more difficult my struggle against my besetting sin. Ah, people never know the amount of harm they do when they go to a minister or some prayer-meeting leader or speaker, and praise what he has been saying!"
As I listened, I groaned inwardly.
"Brother," I said to myself, "speak for yourself, and not for me or for anyone else on earth! Your eloquence may bring you so many plaudits as to turn your head, but mine will never bring me into that peril, I assure you. I have neglect enough and criticism enough and failures enough to keep me humble. For every speech that is over-praised I make a dozen that are not commended at all. I don't get praise enough to go around, one praise to a speech. I am sure that the average public speaker doesn't, either. Most people are too indifferent, or selfish, or cold, or bashful, to tell a speaker that he has helped them, when he has.
"Don't worry, brother," I feel like adding. "Most folks' heads are not so easily turned as yours seems to be. The rest of us know ourselves far too well to wax conceited over a little kindly encouragement. We are too well aware of our shallowness, our ignorance, our faltering, our wretched inadequacy to our tasks. We need to be 'set up' rather than 'taken down.' We need to be assured that we are not the miserable, inefficient, incompetent fools that we are inclined to think ourselves. We need far more to have the heart put into us than the conceit taken out of us. Do without praise, brother, if you want to; but we'll take all the praise you turn away, and more!"
It was a young man that was speaking in dispraise of praise. After he has knocked (and been knocked) around the world a while longer, he will sing a different tune.
Clap Your Hands!
In the commercial world there are appraisers, men whose task it is to fix values, of goods, of houses, of businesses. Similarly in the spiritual world we have the noble calling of the praisers, but the occupation is by no means crowded.
Few acts are more noble than the act of hand-clapping. It is self-forgetful, unselfish. In the deed one's soul goes out to another, rejoices in his accomplishment, exults in his words, wishes him well. It is a sort of ecstasy of altruism. However transitory, it is a breeze of friendship. No one can clap one's hands without being the better for it.
And also, no one can be the recipient of hand-claps without being the better for them. Deserved praise, or even praise half-deserved, is one of the most wholesome of tonics. It is condensed hope. It is concentrated courage. "You have not lived in vain," it says. "Your life has moved fruitfully upon other lives," it says. It expands one, it lifts one up, thus to see one's acts entering into the souls of other men.
Hand-clapping, for the good it does, is the least expensive of benefits. How little energy it requires! Nay, does it not give even more than it takes, inspiring throughout the frame a glow of satisfaction and an impulse for some such achievement as has moved our pleasure? No one ever clapped his hands that did not receive more than he bestowed.
Yet it is sadly easy to get out of the way of hand-clapping. Egotism is a woeful paralyzer of the hands. If we think others should be applauding us, we are loath to clap our hands for others. If we rate ourselves too highly, we are not likely to value others at all. Envy, spite, despondency, all the brood of selfish sins, paralyze the hands. One of the surest symptoms of spiritual disease is a growing awkwardness in hand-clapping, an unwillingness to praise. The egotist may be in the right of it as regards himself; he may be abominably underrated. But in underrating others and refusing them applause he wrongs himself as much as he has been wronged, and deliberately doubles his loss.
Ah, let us loosen our radius and ulna, our carpals and metacarpals! Let us drive the resonant air sharply from between our gratulatory palms! Such exercise is good for the hands. It will make the outlines sweet and firm, the flesh white and rosy. And it is healthful for the spirit as well, beautifying it with the fascination of good will.
Patting Folks on the Back.
There's a big difference between patting a man on the head and patting him on the back.
The head-patter is conceited. He looks down on the object of his praise. He minimizes whomever he commends, as if his head-pat actually pressed him down into a dwarf, a commendable dwarf. The head-patter is an absurd booby.
On the other hand, the back-patter is a jolly good fellow. Solemn nonentities, afraid to unbend lest they break that most precious of their possessions, their dignity, do not like him. Their back is too patrician for a pat. But every sort of man that really amounts to anything rejoices in the back-patter as one of the prime alleviations of life.
A good pat on the back seems actually to push us along the path of progress, whatever way we may be painfully treading. We walk the brisker for it all day. The stones on the road are not so rough the sun is not so hot, the dust is not so blinding. As the head-pat dwarfs us, the back-pat expands us into a giant.
Patting on the back may be done with the tongue even better than with the hand! All it needs is memory, sympathy, and readiness. All, forsooth, when these are three of the rarest of virtues! But memory will tell us what the man has done and has been, what there is in his life to praise; sympathy will put us in touch with his likings, and will show us what sort of praise would be an annoyance to him and what would be a tonic; while readiness will seize the opportunity for the praise, the exactly right time which so hastily passes.
Patting on the back without memory may pat the wrong back. Patting on the back without sympathy may give a blow instead of a pat. Patting on the back without readiness may only pat the vacant air, Like all other acts that illustrate our common humanity, such as shaking hands, smiling, and ushering people into our homes, back-patting is vitiated by hypocrisy. If we really have no admiration for the man we are praising, every applauding word is like a wreath flapped into his face. If we do not really wish him well, every pat on his back is like a push into a bog. Let no man praise me with the mouth unless he also praises me with his shining eyes.
And, as may be said of all other kindly and sincere deeds, this back-patting reacts happily on the man that does it. Just as smiling makes us more cheerful and a cordial welcome to strangers endears our homes to us, so the hearty pat on the back pushes the patter as well as the pattee a measurable distance toward the goal of all sane existence. Not altogether without considerations of one's self, therefore, will one join the blessed brotherhood of praisers; and yet praise is a duty so delightful that the wise man would perform it though it landed him in a dungeon!