Luke 6:37 Judge not, and you shall not be judged: condemn not, and you shall not be condemned: forgive, and you shall be forgiven: No man, avers Sir Thomas Browne, can justly censure or condemn another, because, in fact, no man truly knows another. "This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud."... Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself. The Vicar of Gravenhurst, in his position of parish priest, owns himself compelled to confess that the best people are not the best in every relation of life, and the worst people not bad in every relation of life; so that with experience, he finds himself growing lenient in his blame, if also reticent in his praise. "Again and again I say to myself that only the Omniscient can be the equitable judge of human beings, so complicated are our virtue with our failings, and so many are the hidden virtues, as well as hidden vices, of our fellow-men." If judge at all we dare and do, be it in the spirit and to the latter of Wordsworth's counsel: — "From all rash censure be the mind kept free; He only judges right who weighs, compares, and, in the sternest sentence which his voice pronounces, "ne'er abandons charity." Never let it be forgotten, insists a Quarterly Reviewer, that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single human being of which other men have such a knowledge — its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits — as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judgment. "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord — its various tone, Each spring its various bias; Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it." (F. Jacox.) Parallel Verses KJV: Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: |
    |