agree with me that the best way to assist posterity is to be true to your contemporaries, so there I need say no more—­except that the hopeless man can do the least for his fellows, being unable to give them any thing that should render them other than hopeless themselves; and if, for the grandeur of it, a man were to cast away his purse in order to have the praise of parting with the two mites left in his pocket, you would simply say the man was a fool.  This much seems to me clear, that, if there be no God, it may be nobler to be able to live without one; but, if there be a God, it must be nobler not to be able to live without Him.  The moment, however, that nobility becomes the object in any action, that moment the nobleness of the action vanishes.  The man who serves his fellow that he may himself be noble, misses the mark.  He alone who follows the truth, not he who follows nobility, shall attain the noble.  A man’s nobility will, in the end, prove just commensurate with his humanity—­with the love he bears his neighbor—­not the amount of work he may have done for him.  A man might throw a lordly gift to his fellow, like a bone to a dog, and damn himself in the deed.  You may insult a dog by the way you give him his bone.”

“I dispute nothing of all that,” said Faber—­while good Mr. Bevis sat listening hard, not quite able to follow the discussion; “but I know you will admit that to do right from respect to any reward whatever, hardly amounts to doing right at all.”

“I doubt if any man ever did or could do a thing worthy of passing as in itself good, for the sake of a reward,” rejoined Wingfold.  “Certainly, to do good for something else than good, is not good at all.  But perhaps a reward may so influence a low nature as to bring it a little into contact with what is good, whence the better part of it may make some acquaintance with good.  Also, the desire of the approbation of the Perfect, might nobly help a man who was finding his duty hard, for it would humble as well as strengthen him, and is but another form of the love of the good.  The praise of God will always humble a man, I think.”

“There you are out of my depth,” said Faber.  “I know nothing about that.”

“I go on then to say,” continued the curate, “that a man may well be strengthened and encouraged by the hope of being made a better and truer man, and capable of greater self-forgetfulness and devotion.  There is nothing low in having respect to such a reward as that, is there?”

“It seems to me better,” persisted the doctor, “to do right for the sake of duty, than for the sake of any goodness even that will come thereby to yourself.”