A flattering mouth worketh ruin.
How may we best cure the love of being flattered
I. What flattery is. Solomon calls it “a mouth that flatters.” All that comes from the flatterer is complaisant, only heartiness and sincerity are wanting. All that appears is “a fair semblance,” but very falsehood. The actor in this tragedy never forgets himself and his own advantage, stripping the novice he hath coaxed, and living on him whom he deceived. There are two kinds of flattery: a self-flattery, and a flattery from others. As to the qualities of flattery, it may be hellish, revengeful, servile, cowardly, covetous, or envious. Love to be flattered is a disease of human nature. It is an immoderate desire of praise. When this desire prevails, we believe what the flatterer saith; set the value on ourselves by what such affirm of us. Another branch of love to be flattered is an affected seeking to ourselves, or giving unto others unnecessary occasions of setting forth the worth of our persons, actions, and qualifications, according to the standard of flatterers; a well-pleasedness to hear the great and good things by dissembling flatterers ascribed to us which either we never did, or did in manner much below what they report them. But--
II. Love of undue praise is pernicious. It destroys virtuous principles, natural inclinations to good, estates, reputation, safety and life, the soul and its happiness.
III. What may best effect its cure?
1. Consider the bad name that flattery hath ever had.
2. View the deplorable miseries it hath filled the world with.
3. Suspect all who come to you with undue praise.
4. Reject the friendship of the man who turns due praises into flattery.
5. Look on flattery, and your love for it, as diametrically opposed to God in the truth of all His Word.
6. Cultivate generous and pure love to all that is good.
7. Get and keep the humble frame of heart. Undue love of the praise of men is sacrilegious robbery of God. (Henry Hurst, M. A.)
The flatterer
As to the flatterer, he is the most dangerous of characters. He attacks at points where men are naturally most successfully assailable; where they are most in danger of being thrown off their guard and giving him admission. And when by his flatteries he has thus got the mastery, then follows the execution of the end for which they were employed--“worketh ruin.” The expression is strong, but not stronger than experience justifies. It even works ruin to the most interesting characters--characters admired and worthy of the admiration--by infusing a principle that spoils the whole, the principle of vanity and self-conceit. They thus lose their loveliest and most engaging attraction. And whatever be the selfish object of the flatterer, his selfishness obtains its gratification by the ruin of him whom his flatteries have deceived. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)
Flattery worketh ruin
The stem of the ivy is furnished with root-like suckers which insinuate their spurs into the bark of trees or on the surface of a wall. Who has not seen with regret some noble ash-tree covered with ivy, in whose embrace it rapidly yields up its life? Surely the root is draining the tree of its sap, and transferring it to its own veins. Thus does a sycophant gradually extend his influence over a patron until the manliness of that patron succumbs to his ascendancy. The hero is ruined, and the flatterer flourishes in his place. Beware of the insinuating aptitudes of the parasite! Let him, like ivy on a wall, keep his proper situation. Protect a noble nature from his advances. (Scientific Illustrations.)
Flattery cannot compensate for the damage it works
Parasitic plants send their roots into the substance of another plant, and derive their food from its juices; but though, like some of the human kind, they live upon their neighbour’s bounty, it must be admitted that they sometimes reward their benefactor by adorning it with their beautiful flowers. The Rafflesia Arnoldi, for example, whose flower is three feet across, and whose cup will contain several pints of fluid, grows attached to the stem of a climbing cistus in Sumatra. The mistletoe also, whose silvery berries adorn the oak. Whether these offerings of the parasite bear any reasonable proportion to the amount of damage done by it must be a question open to doubt. Certain it is that the offerings of the social parasite to his benefactor, consisting as they do of subservience, flattery, and petty traits, are no real benefit to anybody; whilst, on the other hand, the injury which the parasite does to honesty and manliness is most unmistakable. On the whole, we are inclined to think that all the productions of parasites, whether vegetable or human, are not sufficient to make us value the producers very highly. (Scientific Illustrations.).