Page:MyPrayerBookHappinessInGoodness.djvu/80

 here is  one  class  of  kind  thoughts  which  must  be dwelt  upon  apart. I allude  to  kind  interpretations. The habit  of  not  judging  others  is  one  which  it  is  very difficult to  acquire,  and  which  is  generally  not  acquired till late  on  in  the  spiritual  life.

ow, the  standard  of  the  Last  Judgment  is  absolute. It is  this  —  the  measure  which  we  have  meted to others. Our present  humor  in  judging  others  reveals to  us  what  our  sentence  would  be  if  we  died  now. Are we  content  to  abide  that  issue? But, as  it  is  impossible all  at  once  to  stop  judging,  and  as  it  is  also impossible to  go  on  judging  uncharitably,  we  must  pass through the  intermediate  stage  of  kind  interpretations. Few men  have  passed  beyond  this  to  a  habit  of  perfect charity, which  has  blessedly  stripped  them  of  their judicial ermine  and  their  deeply-rooted  judicial  habits of mind. We ought,  therefore,  to  cultivate  most  sedulously the  habit  of  kind  interpretations.

Men's actions  are  very  difficult  to  judge. Their real character  depends  in  a  great  measure  on  the  motives which prompt  them,  and  those  motives  are  invisible to us. Appearances are  often  against  what  we  afterward discover  to  have  been  deeds  of  virtue.

HAT mistakes  have  we  not  made  in  judging  others! Have we  not  always  found  in  our  past  experience that on  the  whole  our  kind  interpretations  were  truer than our  harsh  ones?

How many  times  in life  have  we  been  wrong  when  we put  a  kind  construction  on  the  conduct  of  others? We shall not  need  our  fingers  to  count  those  mistakes  upon.