K In our day men sometimes think it good-natured to treat truth and falsehood as at bottom much the same thing; but this cannot be done for long with impunity. In the first age of Christianity it was not so. " Ye have an unction from the Holy One," wrote St. John to the first Christians, " and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." This direct language of St. John would jar upon the ear of a generation which thinks that something is to be said for every falsehood, and something to be urged against every truth ; but it is the natural language of those to whom religious truth is a real thing, and not a passing sentiment or fancy. The law of truth within us necessarily leads to our forming judgments no less than does the law of right.1
1 H. P. Liddon.
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 163
TJ One great evil of sin is that it takes away our right to be indignant when other people sin, and so in time our standard of thought is lowered to their scale.1
(2) In the second place, Scripture stimulates and trains the judicial faculty within us, making its activity keener and wider than would have been possible without it. The servants of God in the Bible are intended to rouse us to admire and imitate them ; and what is this but a judgment of one kind ? The sinners in the Bible, from Cain to Judas Iscariot, are intended to create in us moral repulsion, not for their persons, but for their crimes ; and what is this but an inward and emphatic judgment of another kind?
If Then came the maxim that the indignation expressed by Him against hypocrisy was no precedent for us, inasmuch as He spoke as a Divine person. I contended that it was human, and that if a man did not feel something of the same spirit under similar circumstances, if his blood could not boil with indignation, nor the syllable of withering justice rise to his lips, he could not
even conceive His spirit. Mr. E agreed to this, to my surprise,
and told an anecdote. " Could you not have felt indignation for that, Eobertson ? " My blood was at the moment running fire — not at his story, however, and I remembered that I had once in my life stood before my fellow-creature with words that scathed and blasted ; once in my life I felt a terrible might : I knew, and rejoiced to know, that I was inflicting the sentence of a coward's and a liar's hell.2
3. The words of St. Paul, then, do not forbid us to form judgments and act on them, they simply convey a warning against premature judgments, an admonition in regard to those hasty and ill-considered verdicts we are apt to pronounce both on people and on facts, while in reality the elements for a sound and safe verdict are not in our hands. There are many facts, enterprises, events, and problems in regard to which it is of the very greatest importance to remember the rule of the text, "Judge nothing before the time." They are all those matters into which there enters the element of ignorance, uncertainty, and change. They are those matters in which the fact must be reckoned with that you may be changed, or that they may be
1 Phillips Brooks, Life, 79.
2 Robertson, in Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Eobertson, 212.
164 JUDGING PREMATURELY
changed, or that surroundings may be changed, or that the amount of light may be changed, so that data that are hidden now may be known hereafter, to the altering of human estimates, the overturning of human views.
Let this be lead unto thy feet, that slow Thy steps may be (as of one tired) to give,
When not convinced by sight, a yes or no.
For sunk is he 'mid fools in lowest place, Who no distinction makes, and to the same Conclusion doth arrive in either case.
Since popular opinion is inclined
Erroneous judgments oftentimes to frame, Self-love comes in, the intellect to blind.1
(1) Judge nothing before the time, in view of possible changes in yourself. We all change. We change steadily, we change necessarily, in the process of the years. We change in structure, change in intellect, change in spirit. Our perceptions, our tastes, our needs, all of them alter. And therefore what seems worthless at one stage of our history becomes valuable at another, not because the thing is different in itself, but because we are different who have come to prize it.
Here is a lesson for youth. There are few things to which the youthful are so prone as the practice of judging— judging men, judging methods, judging facts, judging books; and they are continually judging before the time. Youth is often very dogmatic, even when Christianized. It is apt to be contemptuous towards what does not come up to its youthful standard, de- preciatory towards what does not square with its youthful tastes. Take the views of youth in regard to qualities of character. Certain of these qualities get scant justice from the young — patience, for instance. How little do the young think of patience in comparison with self-reliance, fortitude, boldness of initiative, brilliance of attack. They are all for action, all for aggressiveness, all, too, for the men in whom action, and aggres- siveness are the predominant features. But in setting slight store by patience, assigning it a lesser function, relegating it to a lower place, they are judging before the time.