Envy by Lyman Abbott

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 14, 1884

Envy.

By Lyman Abbott

OH, the misery and the meanness of envy!—the most hateful child of a hateful mother. For of all the evil progeny born of the love of approbation, envy is the meanest and the worst. It desires naught for itself except superiority over its fellows, and this it seeks to attain, not by lifting itself up, but by casting its fellows down. From the love of praise the transition is easy and natural to that spirit which hates to hear praise bestowed upon another. This spirit is a stirrer-up of strife; it poisons social conversation with slander and detraction; it entices to treachery and falseness and all underhand measures; it undermines and destroys; it smiles upon its enemy, and smites him under the fifth rib. It is itself the mother of bitterness, wrath, backbiting, hypocrisy, treachery, murder, and all uncharitableness. Beware how you allow this evil spirit to rest for a day, for an hour, in your heart. Beware how you allow yourself in your inmost thought, in your most secret feeling, to wish ill of another's enterprise or evil to another's fame.—Lyman Abbott.