Suspicion's Destructiveness
By S. S. Times
If we are in doubt as to whether a person is seeking to harm us, the surest way to bring about that harm is to make our suspicion apparent. Nothing antagonizes two persons more completely and destructively than either one's expressed suspicion of the other. Many a time has the friendship of two persons been wrecked because one got to suspecting the other of an unfriendliness that never existed until it was brought into being and cultivated by the openly expressed belief that it was there. We ought not to show suspicion; and we ought not to have suspicion. If our own lives are as they should be, we have nothing to fear from any one: suspicion only breeds trouble and weakens us. And our resolute refusal to doubt the goodness of others will often help them to do away with an unworthiness that might indeed have worked harm to us, if encouraged to continue by our expressed belief that it existed.— S. S. Times.