Fault-Finders | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1858

Fault-Finders.

ALL men have their faults, and it is no difficult matter to discover them; but he who loves to contemplate sin, has a better text-book at hand which he can more wisely study. Let him look within his own heart—there he can probe to the bottom, and discover the very springs of every evil thought, word and deed. The follies of men should not pass unnoticed; the voyager upon the ocean of life should know on what rocks and quicksands others have been shipwrecked. But this knowledge is of no avail to him, unless he employ it in the shaping of his own course. His greatest care should be to see that his own vessel is properly manned—that his own sails are trimmed to the favoring breeze—and he will only inquire after the latitude and longitude of others, that he may correct his own.

This race of evil spirits—these fault-finders—lived in the days of Paul, and this is his portraiture of them—"They are filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things." Nor has the race been exterminated; almost in every neighborhood is the trysting-place of some of their number. Alas! I fear we all have some of their bad blood in our veins.

Oh, let us cherish those kindly impulses which God has implanted in our breasts, while we seek to eradicate the uncharitable feelings sown there by the evil one, that we may, without fear of becoming the victims of a righteous condemnation, say with Pope,

Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the faults I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.

Let us remember what Paul says of the want of charity: "Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal; and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing; and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."

Education is the husbandman under whose culture the human heart brings forth good or evil fruit. Show me the family where sympathy and love reign in the household, and I will show you one where each member "suffereth long and is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not himself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." This delightful state of feeling, this heaven upon earth, I must believe, is in a great measure secured or lost by the influence exerted by the precept and example of the parents over the children.

Let us, then, who are parents, be ourselves governed by love; let the law of kindness be upon our lips; let us do to others as we would have them do to us; let us see to it that envy and jealousy find no lodgement in our own breasts; that we think as well and speak as well of every body as truth will allow, nay, that we seldom indulge in the license which truth would permit; that we never refer, especially in the hearing of our children, to the faults of others, except as examples of warning; then shall our own hearts be right toward our fellowmen, and our children, taking knowledge of us, shall be constrained to love and good works.—Sel.