Day 36

(2.) It is clear then, that you judge your neighbour without authority to do so. But you also judge without knowledge .

You do not know the man you judge ; you cannot see his interior ; you do not understand his motive, which may perhaps justify him ; and even if his crime is a public one, you do not know that he may not repent : — or even that he has not already repented, and become one of those over whom the angels rejoice. Therefore, Q judge not . 9 c Charity is patient, is kind. Charity envieth not, is not puffed up. ... Is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil. . . . Beareth all things, believeth all things ; hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ 2 We know also that she 1 rejoiceth not ’ in the iniquity of others, but that she does rejoice when all do good ‘ in the truth.’

1 James iv. 12. 2 Cor. xiii. 4-7.

[ 1*1 ] Hence, charity takes no pleasure in judging ; and this all the more, because in judging others she would condemn herself. Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself ; for thou dost the same things which thou judgest.’ 1 You are, that is, judged out of your own mouth, O wicked servant ! and have pronounced your own sentence.

What joy for a criminal to hear from the very mouth of his judge : 4 You shall not be judged ! 9 But this can only be if he has himself judged no one.

1 Rom. ii. i.

Gbfrt^seventb Das On seeing the smallest faults of others , and being blind to our own greatest ones. — Matt. vii. 3-5.

ESUS CHRIST here sets forth another reason for not judging : — that our own offence may be greater than the one we condemn. ‘And why seest thou a mote in thy brother’s eye, and seest not a beam in thy own eye ? ’

Thou hypocrite ! The worst sort of hypocrisy is to be always condemning others. A man, in doing this, plays the virtuous himself : — he wants to have the strictness of his own morals, and the purity of his own principles, admired : — he would fain be considered an incorruptible character, who is above flattery and spares nobody ; but — hypocrite as he really is — he never dreams of correcting himself. He dilates perpetually on the smallest defects of his neighbours, and never even suspects the enormity of those vices of which he is himself guilty. There are no such men on earth for being indulgent to themselves as these pitiless censors of other people’s lives.

Gbirt^etabtb Dap The Holy Thing : Due discernment in preaching the GospeL — Matt. vii. 6.

HAT which is holy 9 is the body of Jesus Christ ; we must not ‘ give it to dogs ’ : — that is to say, to the impure, to the brazen, to those who are ready to fall out with everybody round them ; nor, again, must we give it to those constantlyrelapsing sinners whom St Peter has figured by the image of a * dog returned to his vomit, and a sow to her wallowing in the mire ’ : — as we have already seen in a passage from that Apostle.

Speaking generally, c that which is holy ’ means all those sacred mysteries that the preachers of the Gospel are warned to impart with great discernment, and not to have profaned by the unworthy.

c Pearls put before swine ’ are holy words spoken before men incapable of relishing them, and who, for this very reason, would turn with a [ I2 4 ]