p. 115 | Fear of Ridicule

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 26, 1871

Fear of Ridicule.

Every age has its besetting sins; every condition its attendant evils; every state of society its diseases that it is especially liable to be attacked by. One of the pests which dog civilization, the more so the further it advances, is the fear of ridicule; and seldom has the contagion been so obnoxious as at this day. Is there any body living, among the upper classes at least, who has not often been laughed out of what he ought to have done, and laughed into what he ought not to have done? Who has not sinned? Who has not been a runagate from duty? Who has not stifled his best feelings? Who has not mortified his noblest desires, solely to escape being laughed at, and not once merely, but time after time, till that which has so often been checked, becomes stunted, and no longer dares lift up its head? And then, after having been laughed down ourselves, we too join the pack who go about laughing down others.—Sel.