The Necessity of Judgment—Sowing and Reaping—Censoriousness Is the Beam—the Dogs and Swine of Society—the Mockery of Love

Prayer

Almighty God, we know that thy word is truth, and that the entrance in of thy word doth give light to every heart. There is no light without thy word, nor is there any truth. We humbly pray thee to send upon us the glory of thy revelation, that seeing the light from heaven we may not mistake the things that are upon the earth. We humbly pray thee to give us a right sense of all the things that are round about us; we mistake the small for the great and the near for the precious, and we know not where we are nor what we look at but as thy spirit dwelleth in us, giving us the right vision and the right sense of all things. Show us the glory of the Lord, so far as our eyes may be able to bear the great light; wherein our vision fails to look upon the glory, show unto our eyes all the goodness of God. Make thy goodness pass before us, thy gentle acts, long-suffering patience, thine all-hopeful love concerning men who have smitten thee in the face, and wounded sorely thy very heart. Thus beholding thy goodness, may we be prepared for the revelation of thy glory, when thou dost call us into the other and higher state.

Thy care of us has been very tender; thou hast dried our tears with a soft hand, thou hast spoken to our hearts in a voice that did not smite them as with thunder, but that fell with the graciousness of the early and the latter rain. Thou hast been mindful of our weakness; wherein thou hast brought thine omnipotence to bear upon our feebleness, thou hast repeated the greatest of thy miracles. Thou hast spread our table in the wilderness, and found water for us in sandy and barren places; thou hast put laughter into our mouth suddenly, when our life was woebegone and the grave was yawning at our feet. Mighty have been our deliverances—thou hast taken the prey from strong hands and thou hast broken down men of great power. Thou hast delivered us and redeemed us and magnified thy name and thy grace in our life, therefore are we here to-day, this Easter morn, with a new hymn and a glowing psalm, yea, with a loud sweet anthem to bless the great and mighty hand of God and the infinite heart of his immeasurable love.

Hear thou the prayer thy servants pray; listen to the sighing of the sad, the wounded spirit; give peace where there has long been unrest or fierce tumult or great dejection; grant a divine deliverance to those who have been long bound in darkness they could not penetrate; and upon us all send some Easter blessing, some resurrectional glance of infinite glory that shall awaken our best hopes and revive our forgotten recollections, and rekindle the enthusiasm of our early love. Thou didst call us out of darkness into thy marvellous light, thou didst give unto our hearts resurrection through the cross and sacrifice of our dearly-beloved and only Saviour. Wherein we have forgotten these marvels of thy grace, do thou now revive their tenderest recollection, so that every heart may bless thee with a new delight, with a high satisfaction, and with an ennobled infinite hope.

We put our lives into thine hands, we would not take care of ourselves, or surely our protection would be vanity. We therefore ask thee to take us, body, soul, and spirit, into thine own keeping: watch the door of our heart, keep the source of our thoughts, and sanctify the very spring of our will and all the actions in which it expresses itself, and may we be found at last, through the blood of the Lamb, without a spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, worthy of his own beauty, worthy of his own comeliness.

The Lord send a light upon his word whensoever we read it, that we may behold its true meaning, and may not fall into the dejection of those who understand nothing but the letter. Show us that the letter is the goblet which holds the wine, and may we drink of the wine of thy wisdom and thy love, and be refreshed and inspired by it every day.

The Lord look upon us at this time of the year, with all the hopefulness of spring breathing around us, with many a sign of returning life. Thou art re-writing thy promises in every opening flower and every promising bud: behold in this revolution of the year do we see the re-writing of some of thy tenderest words. May there be spring in our heart, a vernal breeze in the soul, a gracious and hopeful light shining upon the whole breadth of our life, and in due time may we bring forth fruit unto God which shall please the Most High and gladden him who planted the vine.

We beseech thee to direct us in all the way that we should take, in view of our great responsibilities and opportunities. Enable us to see the measure of our life, and to understand the brevity of our day, and, with all the wakefulness of heart, and industry of hand, and vigilance of mind, may we be about our Father's business, and be found at last as they that wait for their Lord. Regard the family, spare the father, the mother, and all the children, kindle the fire on the cold day, spread the table to meet returning hunger, and make the bed of the afflicted, and bless its pillow with the touch of thine own hand. Regard those who are engaged in business, and help them to do their work every day with an honourable spirit and a religious pur pose, and may their bread be sweet and satisfying because of the honesty through which it is procured. Bless thy servants in basket and in store, and may there be no reason for bitter anxiety because of the bread that perisheth.

Direct the nation in all the crises of its history, inspire the minds of men by thy Holy Spirit—do thou rule the raging of the seas and make the waters calm; walk thou upon every sea that has been disturbed, and breathe thy blessing upon all thy people. God save the Queen, add many unto the days of her life, establish her throne in righteousness, and clothe her reign with prosperity.

And now let us seek for a blessing coming to every heart, a consciousness of sin forgiven through the blood of the Lamb, and a happy delight in the possession of the Holy Spirit, whose it is to sanctify and to make pure with the holiness of God. Amen.

Matthew 7:1-6

1. Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4. Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged." Do not criticise with a censorious and unkindly spirit, do not be bitter, do not be moved by the spirit of animosity and illiberality and uncharitableness. We must judge, in the sense of forming opinions and estimates of one another—that is not the kind of judgment which is forbidden in this exhortation by Jesus Christ. We may get the true meaning of the word by another use which is made of it elsewhere in the Scriptures. Thus, in John, third chapter and seventeenth verse, we read: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; "the same word is translated judged in our text that is translated condemn in this verse. And in the twelfth chapter of John: "I came not to judge the world," to take a bitter and unkind and hostile view of it. And again we read: "Of the hope of the resurrection of the dead am I"—the same word—"called in question." And once more we read: "One man esteemeth—" the same word—"one day above another: another man esteemeth"—the same word—"every day alike." When therefore we are called upon not to judge, we are warned against the self-righteousness which condemns everybody who does not do exactly as we think they ought to do. The spirit that is condemned here is one of infallibility. Find a man who makes himself the standard of everybody's conduct, who judges everybody by himself, by what he would have done under such and such circumstances, and who gives large licence to his tongue in forming and giving opinions upon such persons, and you find the very man referred to in this exhortation. In so far as you are self-contented, self-pleased, self-righteous, in so far as you think it to be your duty to sit down upon the throne of judgment and to judge all your neighbours and the whole human race, in so far are you guilty of the spirit of judgment which Jesus Christ condemns in this text.

Jesus Christ tells you that such judgment does not fall to the ground: you are doing more than merely uttering words when you pass such judgment upon your fellow-creatures. You are not whiling away an hour, you are sowing seed which you will one day have to reap in the form of fruit, for, "with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Do not suppose that you are merely passing an opinion upon your fellow-men, do not fall back upon your supposed innocence, and say that you merely observed or remarked so and so. You shall give an account for every idle word; you shall be made to feel the bitterness of your own speech, the cruelty of your own judgment shall come back upon you like a devouring flame. Jesus Christ undertakes to warn men as to the consequence and issue of certain conditions of spirit, so that no man goes forward in these matters in ignorance of what the result will be.

Let us understand what he meant by this. Did he mean, literally, "with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged"?—that is to say, that some other man would pass exactly the same opinion upon us that we passed upon others. Not at all in that little narrow sense of the word. That was not the lex talionis which he laid down: therein he would have but repeated the old law of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye, whereas he came to lay down a broader judgment. What, then, did the words mean? Not that we should have snarl for snarl, hostile criticism for hostile criticism, one for one and two for two, according to the number and measure thereof. He meant that somehow or other all society, the aggregated man, the all but God, would encounter us in our own spirit; people who never heard of us would somehow rise up to condemn us and reward us according to our own spirit. By some mysterious action of divine providence, society would condemn us with the condemnation we had accorded to others.

You have often been puzzled to know how it was that such and such consequences arose from such and such acts. You have wondered at the unkindness of men, at the bitterness of their judgment. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason may, possibly, have been in yourself—a reason that has been sleeping full twenty years, and is now only bearing fruit? You remember your unkindness to your father and your mother; how you sat on the throne of criticism at the fireside and condemned the whole household in a spirit of self-righteous pride? You remember what an intolerable nuisance you were in the church twenty years ago, snarling at everyone, snubbing everybody, setting up your great righteousness as a rebuke of their feeble morality—how the unkind word was always upon your tongue, and how men might feel perfectly sure that you would go along any censorious line along which they might lead. All that is now coming back to you. You have been smitten first on the one cheek, then on the other. You have been smitten on the head; society scorns you, repudiates you, views you with suspicion and unkindness and distrust. You sowed the wind, you are reaping the whirlwind; you have eaten forbidden fruit, and you are now undergoing its most painful consequences.

Find a kind man, one of noble and liberal spirit, whose thought is always of the charitable type, who cannot be gotten to say a harsh or unfeeling word about anybody—the time will come when society will throw its arms around him and take care of him and nourish and defend him. He shall reap the bountiful harvest of his own beneficence. Such a man will not be allowed to be friendless in the time of his old age: he took no pains to defend or befriend himself, he had a kind word for everybody, he had a crust of bread for the poor and a cup of water for the thirsty—he could always be looked to for the glowing and kind word, nothing mean, bitter, selfish, hostile, unamiable, ever fell from his ruddy lips—and now in the time of his old age and decrepitude, or when any evil report maliciously arises against him, society will close around him and protect the grand old tree from the knife and the axe and the sword of those who would cleave it down.

And what is true of the kind man is true also of the bitter man. There are some persons who cannot speak sweetly. I do not altogether blame them, for their life seems to be one of the mysteries of Providence, inscrutable, wholly beyond our explanation, here and now: we can only say it were better for such that they had not been born—but they cannot speak the noble word they cannot give you a grand beneficent judgment of any human creature or any human deed, their criticism is bitter, highly acidulated—something even worse, highly vitriolized, most pungent, and every word has in it an intent of cruel death. What will be the judgment society will pass upon such persons by-and-bye? They will get what they have given, they will reap as they have sown—let that word never be forgotten. God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Not in some little literal way of a man dealing with him as he dealt with others, but with the marvellous social influence which gets around a man to help him up or to smite and blast him. Thank God for these great promises and laws that make society secure! They give solidity to the whole constitution of humanity. We cannot play at criticism and be harmless, we cannot be censorious and then retire upon our respectability. Every bitter word you have spoken about man, woman, or child has gone out to come back again, and will smite you some day. With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. This is a great law, and all human history is its exposition and justification.

Jesus Christ now proceeds to give a vivid application of these words, and to accent them as with the point of a sword. "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Are we sure that we have laid hold of the right exposition of these words in our other lessons received upon them from divers teachers? What is the beam in the eye of the judge? Does it mean that though I condemn some little fault in you I have a greater fault of my own which has not yet been discovered? I do not understand it in that light. Here is a man about whom no fault can ever be found of the usual kind, and yet he is continually judging other men, sentencing some to darkness and others to oblivion, and passing various sentences upon those who are round about him, and yet he is sober, chaste, good in all we can say about him, punctual in his church attendances, exact in his payments, of good standing in the market-place—what beam is there in the eye of such a man? Now we come to the right meaning. He is censorious: that is the beam referred to by the great Teacher. The very fact that he judges another man in an uncharitable spirit is the beam, compared with which any other fault is a mere mote or speck, a mere splinter of wood compared to a great beam of timber.

That is how Jesus Christ estimates the censorious spirit. He says it is to other faults as a beam is to a little splinter. The man is a model man in everything else so far as society knows him, exact, punctual, critical in all his relations, a more honourable man is not to be found in the marketplace, all his payments are promptly and completely made, and there is nothing at all about him except this miserable spirit of criticism upon other people, always finding fault with somebody else. Now Jesus Christ says that although he be faultless in all the ordinary senses of that term. the very spirit of censoriousness that is in him is a great beam across his eyes. Let, us, then, take great care lest the very thing that we had imagined to be no fault at all is the supreme fault.

Let us illustrate this: here is a man who will slander his neighbour by the hour, and calls himself a Christian, and never doubts his own Christianity; he sends heterodox thinkers to hell by the thousand, he whips the Unitarians into the very hottest perdition—all that he himself does is to slander his neighbour, and then engage in prayer. It never occurs to him that slander is a deadlier sin than mere intellectual error. Jesus calls the slanderous spirit a beam compared with which any other mistake is a little thin splinter. Here is a man who condemns every poor creature that is overtaken in a fault. He has no sympathy with such. The man took a glass of drink too much, lost his equilibrium, was seen in a reeling state—that circumstance is reported to the man who only indulges in slanderous criticism, and the man instantly calls for the excommunication of the erring brother from the church, not knowing that he himself is drunk, but not with wine, drunk with a hostile spirit, drunk with uncharitableness, drunk with the feeling that rejoices in the slips and falls of others. O thou hypocrite, actor, masked and visored man! Pluck the beam from thine own eye—then shalt thou see more clearly the mote, the splinter, that is in thy brother's eye.

I would preach to myself as loudly and keenly as to any other man, herein, if so be I had been guilty of this ineffable meanness, and this most detestable of all tricks of the devil, to speak an unkind word about any human creature, to suspect the honesty of any man. If ever I have said about a brother minister, "He is a fine man in many respects, a noble creature, grand, chivalrous, kind of soul—but—" if ever I have said that but, God will punish me for it. I shall suffer loss therein. If my brother has fallen, and I have said, so low down in my consciousness that I could hardly heat it myself, "I am rather glad of it," God will give me a hell for that. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Have I ever said one unkind and thoughtless word about any human creature. It has been as a beam in my eye, while your faults, even if you have beer intemperate, are virtues, compared with my huge overshadowing sin.

We do not lay hold of this great truth sufficiently. We think that a little slander is of no consequence. To be called up before the church and condemned for slander! Condemn the drunkard, turn out the man who by infinite pressure has committed some sin—turn him out—certainly, and never go after him and never care what becomes of him, let a wolf gnaw him at the core—only get rid of him:—if we go home and speak unkindly of man, woman, or child, who is the great sinner, the drunkard we have just expelled, or the closely-shaven, highly polished Christian who does nothing but filch his neighbour's good name? It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. You do not know the meaning of Christ's gospel, you are not in the kingdom at all; you have learned a few words which you chatter with parrot-like accuracy, but the gospel, the all-redeeming, all-hoping, all-saving gospel, you know nothing about.

So then do not imagine that this is the case of a great drunkard speaking against some person with a much smaller fault. It is the case of censoriousness against any other fault, the slander-spirit against the whole catalogue of devilisms. Wherein then shall we wash our hearts and cleanse our souls? Perhaps I may have spoken against some men—if I have, I shall yet feel the rod of the divine vengeance upon my life. Thou art inexcusable, O man! whosoever thou art that judgest, for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same things. That is the meaning of the Saviour's teaching. Wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself. To judge is to condemn. Cleanse the church of this spirit of bitterness and its orthodoxy will take care of itself. O I cry before Christ sometimes, when I see him very clearly—I just fall right down at his feet and cry, and tell him that the people are most anxious about their intellectual views, and would curse any number of people who did not subscribe their catechism, and take a keen delight in damning and ramming them down in the deepest and hottest hell—but, O Thou wounded One! when they get together they have not a kind, noble, hopeful word to speak of any creature that differs from them. "Then," saith he, "they have a beam in their eye, compared with which the faults of others may be but splinters." Why dost thou judge thy brother, why dost thou set at naught thy brother, for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ?

Now let us come to Matthew 7:6. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." Now here is the spirit of judgment; how am I to know which is the dog, how am I to know how to classify those who are no better than swine—is not this the very spirit that has been condemned? No, we are not now talking about men who belong to the same universe. We have been speaking, or hearing Christ speak, rather, about brother's treatment of brother; we are now hearing him speak about the treatment of those who neither understand nor appreciate our heart's best life. The word brother now drops out of the criticism and other words are imported into the consideration of the case. Jesus Christ when he went before Herod would not give that which was holy unto the dogs, neither would he cast his pearls before swine. You must speak your deepest thinkings to the ear of sympathy, you must find out who has the spirit of communion with your spirit, when you come, to utter the profoundest feelings and highest aspirations of your heart. Speak not in the ears of a fool; for he will despise the wisdom of thy words. Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee, rebuke a wise man and he will love thee.

You know what it is to be in want of sympathy. You have a great grief, and you say, "To whom can I tell this?" If I tell it, to one, I get it all back again, as if I had spoken to a rock; if I tell it to another kind of heart, why the very telling of it seems to be a kind of evaporation by which my oppressed spirit is relieved. Do not speak the deepest secrets of your soul to those who have never been in the same mental or spiritual condition: they will think you erratic, romantic, eccentric—they will pity you: when they go away from hearing your tale they will intimate that your mind is a little unsettled, and that they have their fears about you. They do not understand the graphic language of your tragic experience, they have never been in the same darkness, never fought the same battle, never drunk of the same bitter cup; therefore, when you come near them, speak not: silence is better than speech in such society—give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you, and you hear that your most sacred feelings have been travestied and your most solemn words have been mocked.

We have all had experience of this kind, it may be, in some degree: we have told what we thought was a friendly heart some bitter thing that was troubling us very much, and it has actually come back to us in the form of a falsehood, that has turned again and rent us. Hast thou a friend? Treat him as such, bind him to thine heart with hooks of steel, tell him everything: he will divide thy burdens, he will double thy joys. Beware of the unsympathetic ear, beware of the unsympathetic heart: thou wilt get nothing from those but trampling and rending.

Now some may say, having heard this preaching of Jesus Christ, "Where is the gospel? There is not a word of gospel in all the sermon which Jesus Christ has preached to us this morning. There is nothing evangelic, there is nothing doctrinally savoury, there is no old wine of blood. Seneca might have said this, it might have been written in old Latin." You think so? You try to carry out the injunction of the text, and ere you have gone two steps in the direction of its accomplishment you will want Christ and the cross, and the blood and the Holy Ghost, for this is the last and chiefest of the divine directions.

This teaching, some may say, is purely negative; it is telling us what not to do. You try to realize the doctrine and you will see how far it is merely negative. If you sit within the narrowness of the letter you may call it a negative kind of teaching, but if you try to carry it out in your life, if you never more have to slander a man, think or speak unkindly about any human creature, you will soon know whether the doctrine is negative or positive. It is courageous, for the Scribes and the Pharisees were the princes of slander, and of malicious hostile criticism; it is spiritual, for it searches the heart, and lays down a principle which cannot be carried out by mere mechanism. This is not a trick in handicraft, this is an outgoing and blossom of the renewed heart: it is practical, there is nothing sentimental in this, this is the eloquence of action.

If you, from this time forth, could show the spirit of charity, you would strike the mocker dumb. He has his best hold upon us when he hears us criticising one another. He says, "See how these Christians love one another." When he hears ministers undervaluing one another, running down each other's preaching and methods of work, he says, "See how these Christians love one another." When he hears various communions of Christians traducing one another, proving one another wrong, and excommunicating one another, he says, "See how these Christians love one another." When he comes to a cemetery and sees a chapel on one side on consecrated ground and a chapel on the other on unconsecrated ground, he laughs a laugh, he has a right to laugh, and says, "See how these Christians love one another."

My friends, it has too long been the case of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, trinitarian versus Unitarian, citadel against tower, and A against B. "Thou hypocrite," says the great Teacher, "thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of hostile judgment and uncharitable criticism out of thine own eye; then shalt thou see more clearly to cast out the little splinter that is in thy brother's eye."