If To summer travellers in Norway, ignorant of the imple- ments of the country, there is a frequent cause of curiosity in certain cumbrous constructions of wood, disposed at intervals by the side of the public roads. There they lie, baking and peeling in the hot summer sunshine, never used, yet never removed. What is the meaning of them ? They are lumber on the road. They are eyesores to the tourists. They scare the horses. Surely the best thing to do with them is to break them up into posts for the fences, or faggots for the fire. That is perhaps your impression, as you look at them on a bright July day. But if you visited Norway amidst the snows of the winter or spring, you would be thankful that these homely contrivances are in readiness. They are simply wooden snow-ploughs of unusual shape and size, kept on the spot for the use of the peasants who maintain the road. To say on a summer day that they are useless is plainly to judge before the time.2
(4) Judge nothing before the time, in view of possible changes in the amount of light, with the consequent unveiling of facts at present concealed, data and evidence at present hid.
If The supreme Court of the United States, just after the inauguration of President Buchanan, decided (over the case of Dred Scott) that slaves were property and not persons. This decision Lincoln, after succeeding Buchanan, challenged. At New York on 27th February 1860, he said: "Perhaps you will say, the Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favour. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's dis- tinction between dictum and decision, the court has decided the question for you in a sort of way. The court has substantially said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean that it was made
1 W. A. Gray. a find,
168 JUDGING PREMATURELY
in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it ; that it is so made that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the statement in the opinion that ' the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.' " 1
4. Hitherto we have spoken of matters that may often be settled in time ; we revert under this head to the standpoint of St. Paul, and speak of matters that for the most part must be left to eternity. Here a wide field opens up, suggesting at least four different cautions.
(1) Judge no one's character before the time. As a rule, you have not the evidence. The outer life which man sees may be different from the inner life which God sees, and may lie beyond your analysis, because beyond your ken. You see your neighbour's failures, but not his aspirations; his stumbles into what is wrong, but not his struggles after what is right; his occasional sins, but not his fierce and lifelong temptations. God and God alone strikes the balance; let God and God alone be the arbiter. Judge not till the last great day, when He admits you to participation in His knowledge, and asks you to assent to His award.
If Sometimes, under the most unpromising appearances, there is a fund of hidden good. We all of us have known people with a manner so rude as to be almost brutal, whom we have after- wards discovered to have very tender hearts. And persons are to be found who have a reputation for stinginess, but who really save up their money that they may give it to the poor with- out letting the world know what they do. In the same way we have met people whose conversation strikes us as uniformly frivolous, or at least as wanting in seriousness, and yet it may be that this is the effect of a profoundly serious, but shy, reserved nature, bent on concealing from any human eye the severe self- scrutinizing, self-repressing life within.2
If While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions- — " Evangelical and narrow," or " Latitudinarian and Pantheistic," or "Anglican and supercilious" — that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one,
1 TJie History of North America, xv. 106. - H. P. Liddon.
i CORINTHIANS iv. 5 169
because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.1
(2) Judge no one's work before the time — least of all, if that work be spiritual. Much of the truest and finest spiritual work that goes on is of a kind that defies tabulation. It refuses to be set down in statistics, or grouped in anecdotes, or presented in any tangible or calculable form whatsoever. The balance of the sanctuary is a rarer and more delicate instrument than the balance of the shop, though the balance of the shop too often takes its place. You cannot weigh the fruits of the Tree of Life as a shopman weighs apples and oranges over his counter, nor can you count the number of conversions as a shopman counts the coins in his till. The mistake of many, both without the Church and within it, lies in forgetting this, and importing the commercial principle of so much visible return for so much visible outlay — a principle which is degrading to the work, discouraging to the worker, and presumptuous and dictatorial towards God.