p. 269 | Judge Not

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 17.

Judge Not.

PERHAPS no lecture which John B. Gough ever delivered, has done more good than the one he used to give so often on "Circumstances." With the skill of an artist, and with all the fire and passion of his fervid temperament, he would narrate incidents, showing how often persons are misjudged, because the one who pronounces judgment is ignorant of the circumstances of the other. An event just reported from a town in Kansas, painfully illustrates the same subject. A young woman was teaching school in the place, and people considered her mean and unsocial, because her garments were threadbare, and her habits reserved. At last these complaints grew into a demand for her removal on no other ground than that she was unpopular. Her resignation was requested, and in a polite note to the superintendent of schools, she bowed to the inevitable, and the next day took morphine and died.

Then, little by little, the truth came out, that she had practiced the most heroic self-denial during all this cold, dreary winter. She had had no fire in her room, and her bed was without blankets, or sufficient covering. She was saving her earnings to help support an aged father and educate a young brother in an Eastern college. Worn by physical exposure, her courage failed before this last cruel obstacle. When the facts were understood, there came warmest sympathy and admiration for the self-abnegation of this woman, whose heart and life had been pierced through by words of cruel censure, words that are sharper than steel. But sympathy came too late. It is only another illustration of the old text, "Judge not." —Sel.