June 7

“Earnest words must needs be spoken
When the warm heart bleeds or burns
With its scorn of wrong, or pity
For the wronged, by turns.

“But, by all thy nature’s weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.

“Know’st thou not all germs of evil
In thy heart await their time?
Not thyself, but God’s restraining
Stays their growth of crime.

“Could’st thou boast, O child of weakness,
O’er the sons of wrong and strife,
Were their strong temptations planted
In thy path of life?”

WHITTIER

“We all have our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“Generally speaking, the judging of others is the foul stain of social life.”

Baron BUNSEN

June 6

“Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin’ wrang,
To step aside is human;
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.

“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;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.”

BURNS

“The practice of putting favourable interpretations on dubious actions is another exercise of the Christ-like spirit of sweetness.”

June 5

“But as an effectual remedy against this fault, (judging others hardly), I would remind thee to occupy thy thoughts with the defects of thine own heart; for thou wilt hourly perceive more and more that thou hast so much to do and work in thyself, and for thyself, as to have neither time nor inclination to attend to the deeds of others.”

SCUPOLI

“Of all spirits, I believe the spirit of judging is the worst. . . Looking for the faults, which I had a secret consciousness were in myself, in other people, and accusing them; instead of looking for their faults in myself, where I should have been sure to find them all, - this, I find, has more hindered my progress in love, and gentleness, and sympathy, than all things else.”

F. D. MAURICE

“It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self, while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

June 4

“It is not the effect of one particular act of injustice that should impress us with so much regret, it is the habit of too great suddenness or hardness in judging. How difficult it is for us to estimate the many ways in which we may be mistaken. When shall we learn to keep the knowledge always present with us that often kindness is our best uprightness, and our truest justice is mercy?”

JEAN INGELOW

“Turn thine eyes unto thyself, and beware thou judge not the deeds of other men. In judging of others a man laboureth in vain, often erreth and easily sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboureth fruitfully.”

THOMAS à KEMPIS

“While we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions – ‘Evangelical and Narrow’; or, ‘Latitudinarian and Pantheistic’; or, ‘Anglican and Supercilious’ – that man, in his solitude, is, perhaps, shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]