IT is very easy to criticize or find fault. It does not need an expert at all. Byron truly says:
"A man must serve his time at every trade
Save censure—critics all are ready made."
One of Shakespeare's characters says: "I am nothing if not critical;" and it is a fact that men use criticism to hide their own mediocrity or to magnify their littleness.
There is criticism which is helpful. Sometimes it is kind and encouraging; sometimes it is harsh and rough, and wields a tremendous bludgeon with no anesthetics. But in both cases it is honest, and is designed to be helpful, and will be if rightly received. Let all of us poor mistake-makers be so exercised by it that it will yield the peaceable fruits of perfection.
There is criticism that is narrow, mean, cruel. Sometimes those who criticize do it unconsciously; they are breathing out the atmosphere of their lives. Pestilential, however, is their breath. Sometimes they criticize better people to excuse their own sins. "Others are just as bad;" "Others are worse than I am," are frequently heard. The higher the man the more he becomes a mark for criticism. The greater his profession, the bigger his work, the more he becomes an object for the faultfinder's beratings, cynic's innuendoes, and the critic's arrows. He must expect them, whether justified or otherwise.
If criticism is true, let us profit by it. Many a sheep is kept in the fold by a snarling dog. If the criticism is not true, let it pass. Learn from the old blacksmith, who said that he could hammer out a reputation upon his anvil easier than he could deny the stories of the faultfinders and backbiters.
Above all do not be among the backbiters, slanderers, faultfinders, those who take up a reproach against their neighbor. "Judge not that ye be not judged." "With the same measure ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." "He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy." These are truths which we must meet in the judgment. Remember,
"All dust is frail, all flesh is weak,
Be thou the true man thou dost seek."