IT is as easy to place ourselves under condemnation by condemning our brother and exalting ourselves as it is by committing open sin. It is easy to criticize, easy to find fault, easy to bring scripture against our brethren.
“All men are frail, all flesh is weak,”
and strong and pure indeed is the life in which jealous eyes can not discover some error or missing of the mark according to human judgment. But the human judgment may be more sinful in spirit and motive than the sins and mistakes it condemns. The latter may be committed through lack of knowledge, through error in judgment, while the former, the criticism, may be inspired by the very spirit of egotism, manifested in the prayer of the Pharisee: “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, . . . or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” I do not eat flesh, nor do this nor that nor these nor those. And, in his cloak of self-complacency, the critic wraps himself, and wishes that other men were almost as good as he. He would lose his glory were they better.
Better by far be the sinful publican, who “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.” It is good to pay tithes, it is good to fast, it is good to abstain from flesh meats, good to do all these things if they are done in sanctified knowledge and intelligent faith, but better than all Pharisaical doing is a heart of love for God and those whom Christ has purchased with His own blood.
Must we criticize? turn it inward—
“All men are frail; all flesh is weak;Be thou the true man thou dost seek.”
“Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up [in spite of your judgment]; for God is able to make him stand.” “Let us not therefore judge one another anymore; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion in his brother's way.” “Above all things have fervent charity [love] among yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.”