sympathy, we see them not at all. Every one has had experience of how absence and distance blunt sensibility-how even sufferings and wants of which we have the most intimate knowledge, to which perhaps we have daily ministered, can begin to grow indistinct when place interposes its screen. There are men who now do nothing, who lose not an hour of the day, not a watch of the night, through their care for human sufferings, who if they saw with their own eyes the things that are, would pour out their wealth like water, and know no rest until they had removed the horrid image from their thoughts. The bearings of a lively and prompt imagination upon the active virtues are often of vital import, making all the difference. upon the affections of the presence or of the absence of their exciting objects. The moral imagination of childhood is proverbially quick and true; it realizes the human feeling under differences of position; and the natural sensibility, uninjured as yet by a caste education, has not been blunted by selfish resistance to its pleadings. And this is one of the faculties of childhood to which we must return and be converted, if we would enter into the kingdom of God. For this kind of imagination comes mainly from a sensitive heart-it is the result of fresh and simple feelingand we are shorn of our humanity when, through deadness of sympathy, we have no access to what our nature is feeling, wanting and suffering in the

various conditions of life. And this barren inhumanity may exist without either distance or absence: it may exist towards members of the same household it may, and it does, exist towards those who serve our daily wants, to an extent that more than any other familiar fact shows how poor we are in spiritual accomplishment-how little we have the power, through grace and simplicity of heart, and the insight of sympathy, to overcome the small difficulties of contrasted position.

Our common nature makes us one with all men, and gives the power of entering into all men's hearts. High or low, rich or poor, happy or unhappy, pure or guilty, learned or ignorant, we may know their inmost being, and hold the key of their spirits. And accordingly he who was the full image of that nature was reproached by those in whom it was maimed, by the spiritually halt and blind, with being the Friend of Publicans and Sinners. It was one of the many cases in which intended insult redounded to his glory, and thorns wreathed in mockery crowned him as rightful Lord-the universal Sympathizer-who knew what is in man-Son of Man and Son of God, because in him the elements of humanity were all present and all reconciled, fused into the image of Him who spoke and wrought within him.

XIV.

The judging Spirit.

MATT. vii. I:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."

ALL men exert some power of praise and censure, and have a circle whom they influence. All, therefore, are capable of affecting the reputation of other men, of directing the moral sentiment of society. And when it is remembered what vague rumours create reputations, prepare the way for favourable or unfavourable judgments, predispose for moral impressions or stand in the place of them, this power of influencing opinion, which is exercised by every one, will be regarded by a man of any conscientiousness as among the gravest of his responsibilities. A man's fate in life may depend upon this floating reputation, which no one is accountable for. Men will, or will not, look to him with expectation, with a view to his filling. important offices, on account of impressions which have no certain foundations, but which have become a sort of general feeling, though produced only by one light tongue echoing another.

man.

Such in its relations to others may be the importance of regarding our power of affecting Opinion with some sacredness, with a heart that suggests the fear of doing wrong, and shrinks from the committal of so great an injury. In its relation to ourselves the matter is even more solemn; for there is nothing more fatal to every kind of excellence, to every grace of thought or feeling, than the habit of needlessly judging other menthe habit of forming and uttering sharply defined opinions respecting the invisible spirit that dwells in a Even if the justice of an unfavourable judgment was absolutely certain, one might suppose that all earnest and gentle natures, under no necessity of duty, would recoil from giving it form, from lodging it in the minds of others, from shaping a bad reputation for another with their own lips, and giving it currency with the intent of their hearts. But when we reflect on the uncertainty of all such judgments, on the profound mystery that attaches to every man, on the hidden depths, the latent workings, the possibilities unknown of every human spirit, the presumption that volunteers a judgment, as though that solemn and inscrutable nature was a mere transparency, ought to repel and shock us, as partaking of profaneness and impiety.

And favourable judgments, uttered praise, if more amiable, may be not less arrogant. The self-ignorance betrayed, the amount of worthless or misleading opinion

put into circulation may be equally great. Men, for instance, of the most restricted reading, totally ignorant of the literature of any department of thought, will not hesitate to style a man original, if he has enlightened, or surprised, or agitated their minds, making their own ignorance a standard of judgment. He indeed has judged them by showing a power above them, by fathoming their minds and adding something to their depth; but for them to judge him, to fix his place, to assign his merit, is by necessity of the case quite beyond their province. To acknowledge, and that warmly and gratefully, the mental benefits we are conscious of receiving from other minds, is just and natural; but this, when modestly put, is a judging of ourselves rather than of them-a confession of our relation to them, rather than an attempt to fix their relation either to the general human intellect or to the great masters of Thought. But it is the spirit of judgment, whether right or wrong, the attitude of mind. which it implies, that is necessarily poor, enfeebling, ungenerous, injurious to modesty, injurious to progress, placing us in false and presumptuous relations to both God and man. Let us follow this spirit into some of its manifestations.

I. We do not hesitate to judge those whom God. has placed in a condition, the effects of which on character and habit we have no means of correctly estimating. We apply the ready standard of our