| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 19 |
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It is a fact that the faults which we usually see and criticize in others are the very faults which are the most marked in us. Tennyson said that if he had been one of the wise men of Greece, and had been asked for a wise saying, he would have given this: “Every man imputes himself.” He meant that in our judgment of others we show a miniature of ourself. If this is true we should be careful in judging others, for in doing so we are only revealing our own faults. This should lead us also to close scrutiny of our own life, to get rid of the things in us which are not beautiful.
But we also owe to others the duty of fault finding. Among the old Levitical laws was this one, “Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.” Jesus also implied that after we had cast the beam out of our own eye, we should help our brother to get the mote out of his eye. If we see that a friend is falling into some bad habit which will impair his usefulness or perhaps in the end bring ruin upon his life, we are not faithful to him if we remain silent and allow him to go on unwarned. If he should perish in the end, and perish because we have failed to warn him of his fault or sin, some measure of blame would rest upon us forever.
No other duty, however, is more delicate and more difficult than that of fault finding in such cases. It often breaks a friendship, costing us our friend. There are those who will even implore us to tell them their faults, yet who, when we have yielded to their entreaty and gently mentioned to them something which we believe to be a fault, are offended. Our faithfulness has made them our enemies. It would seem that there are friendships which will endure such a test. Usually it is better not to tell another his faults, directly at least.
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