is persecuted for his goodness, when he is only disliked for his superiority.  He becomes content to warn people, and if they reject his advice and get into difficulties, he is not wholly ill-pleased.  Whereas the diffident person, who tremblingly assumes the responsibility for some one else’s life, is beset by miserable regrets if his penitent escapes him, and attributes it to his own mismanagement.  The truth is that moral indignation is a luxury that very few people can afford to indulge in.  And if it is true that a rich man can with difficulty enter the kingdom of heaven, it is also true that the dramatic man finds it still more difficult.  He is impervious to criticism, because he bears it with meekness.  He has so good a conscience that he cannot believe himself in the wrong.  If he makes an egregious blunder, he says to himself with infinite solemnity that it is right that his self-satisfaction should be tenderly purged away, and glories in his own humility.  A far wholesomer frame of mind is that of the philosopher who said, when complimented on the mellowness that advancing years had brought him, that he still reserved to himself the right of damning things in general.  Because the truth is that the things which really discipline us are the painful, dreary, intolerable things of life, the results of one’s own meanness, stupidity, and weakness, or the black catastrophes which sometimes overwhelm us, and not the things which we piously and cheerfully accept as ministering to our consciousness of worth and virtue.

If I say that the dramatic failing is apt to be more common among the clergy than among ordinary mortals, it is because the clerical vocation is one that tempts men who have this temperament strongly developed to enter it, and afterwards provides a good deal of sustenance to the particular form of vanity that lies behind the temptation.  The dramatic sense loves public appearances and trappings, processions and ceremonies.  The instinctive dramatist, who is also a clergyman, tends to think of himself as moving to his place in the sanctuary in a solemn progress, with a worn spiritual aspect, robed as a son of Aaron.  He likes to picture himself as standing in the pulpit pale with emotion, his eye gathering fire as he bears witness to the truth or testifies against sin.  He likes to believe that his words and intonations have a thrilling quality, a fire or a delicacy, as the case may be, which scorch or penetrate the sin-burdened heart.  It may be thought that this criticism is unduly severe; I do not for a moment say that the attitude is universal, but it is commoner, I am sure, than one would like to believe; and neither do I say that it is inconsistent with deep earnestness and vital seriousness.  I would go further, and maintain that such a dramatic consciousness is a valuable quality for men who have to sustain at all a spectacular part.  It very often lends impressiveness to a man, and convinces those who hear and see him of his sincerity; while