True charity is not typified by an almsbox. The benevolence of a check
book does not meet all the wants of humanity. Giving food, clothing and
money to the poor is only the beginning, the kindergarten class, of real
charity. Charity has higher, purer forms of manifestation. Charity is
but an instinctive reaching out for justice in life. Charity seeks to
smooth down the rough places of living, to bridge the chasms of human
sin and folly, to feed the heart-hungry, to give strength to the
struggling, to be tender with human weakness, and greatest of all, it
means—obeying the Divine injunction: “Judge not.”
The true symbol of the greatest charity is the scales of judgment held
on high, suspended from the hand of Justice. So perfectly are they
poised that they are never at rest; they dare not stop for a moment to
pronounce final judgment; each second adds its grain of evidence to
either side of the balance. With this ideal before him, man, conscious
of his own weakness and frailty, dare not arrogate to himself the Divine
prerogative of pronouncing severe or final judgment on any individual.
He will seek to train mind and heart to greater keenness, purity, and
delicacy in watching the trembling movement of the balance in which he
weighs the characters and reputations of those around him.
It is a great pity in life that all the greatest words are most
degraded. We hear people say: “I do so love to study character, in the
cars and on the street.” They are not studying character; they are
merely observing characteristics. The study of character is not a puzzle
that a man may work out over night. Character is most subtle, elusive,
changing and contradictory—a strange mingling of habits, hopes,
tendencies, ideals, motives, weaknesses, traditions and
memories—manifest in a thousand different phases.
There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of
character, one quality that, if man have it, he may _dare to
judge_—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a
proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty
and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to the magic imagination
of the genius of the author; that proofreader is busy watching for an
inverted comma, a mis-spacing, or a wrong-font letter. He has an eye
trained for the imperfections, the weaknesses. Men who pride themselves
on being shrewd in discovering the weak points, the vanity, dishonesty,
immorality, intrigue and pettiness of others, think they understand
character. They know only part of character—they know only the depths
to which some men may sink; they know not the heights to which some men
may rise. An optimist is a man who has succeeded in associating with
humanity for some time without becoming a cynic.
We never see the target a man aims at in life; we see only the target he
hits. We judge from results, and we imagine an infinity of motives that
we say must have been in his mind. No man since the creation has been
able to live a life so pure and noble as to exempt him from the
misjudgment of those around him. It is impossible to get aught but a
distorted image from a convex or a concave mirror.
If misfortune comes to someone, people are prone to say, “It is a
judgment upon him.” How do they know? Have they been eavesdropping at
the door of Paradise? When sorrow and failure come to us, we regard them
as misdirected packages that should be delivered elsewhere. We do too
much watching of our neighbor’s garden, too little weeding in our own.
Bottles have been picked up at sea thousands of miles from the point
where they have been cast into the waters. They have been the sport of
wind and weather; carried along by ocean currents, they have reached a
destination undreamed of. Our flippant, careless words of judgment of
the character of someone, words lightly and perhaps innocently spoken,
may be carried by unknown currents and bring sorrow, misery and shame to
the innocent. A cruel smile, a shrug of the shoulders or a cleverly
eloquent silence may ruin in a moment the reputation a man or woman has
been building for years. It is as a single motion of the hand may
destroy the delicate geometry of a spider’s web, spun from its own body
and life, though all the united efforts of the universe could not put it
back as it was.
We do not need to judge nearly so much as we think we do. This is the
age of snap judgments. The habit is greatly intensified by the
sensational press. Twenty-four hours after a great murder there is
difficulty in getting enough men who have not already formulated a
judgment, to try the case. These men, in most instances, have read and
accepted the garbled, highly colored newspaper account; they have to
their own satisfaction discovered the murderer, practically tried him
and—sentenced him. We hear readers state their decisions with all the
force and absoluteness of one who has had the whole Book of Life made
luminant and spread out before him. If there be one place in life where
the attitude of the agnostic is beautiful, it is in this matter of
judging others. It is the courage to say: “I don’t know. I am waiting
further evidence. I must hear both sides of the question. Till then I
suspend all judgment.” It is this suspended judgment that is the supreme
form of charity.
It is strange that in life we recognize the right of every criminal to
have a fair, open trial, yet we condemn unheard the dear friends around
us on mere circumstantial evidence. We rely on the mere evidence of our
senses, trust it implicitly, and permit it to sweep away like a mighty
tide the faith that has been ours for years. We see all life grow dark,
hope sink before our eyes, and the golden treasures of memory turn to
cruel thoughts of loss to sting us with maddening pain. Our hasty
judgment, that a few moments of explanation would remove, has estranged
the friend of our life. If we be thus unjust to those we hold dear, what
must be the cruel injustice of our judgment of others?
We know nothing of the trials, sorrows and temptations of those around
us, of pillows wet with sobs, of the life-tragedy that may be hidden
behind a smile, of the secret cares, struggles and worries that shorten
life and leave their mark in hair prematurely whitened, and in character
changed and almost re-created in a few days.
We say sometimes to one who seems calm and smiling: “You ought to be
supremely happy; you have everything that heart could wish.” It may be
that at that very moment the person is passing alone through some agony
of sorrow, where the teeth seem almost to bite into the lips in the
attempt to keep feelings under control, when life seems a living death
from which there is no relief. Then these light, flippant phrases jar
upon us, and we seem as isolated and separated from the rest of humanity
as if we were living on another planet.
Let us not dare to add to the burden of another the pain of our
judgment. If we would guard our lips from expressing, we must control
our mind, we must stop this continual sitting in judgment on the acts of
others, even in private. Let us by daily exercises in self-control learn
to turn off the process of judging—as we would turn off the gas. Let us
eliminate pride, passion, personal feeling, prejudice and pettiness from
our mind, and higher, purer emotions will rush in, as air seeks to fill
a vacuum. Charity is not a formula; it is an atmosphere. Let us
cultivate charity in judging; let us seek to draw out latent good in
others rather than to discover hidden evil. It requires the eye of
charity to see the undeveloped butterfly in the caterpillar. Let us, if
we would rise to the full glory of our privilege, to the dignity of true
living, make for our watchword the injunction of the supreme charity of
the world—“Judge not.”
V