DISCREDITABLE CONDUCT
(1915)
Discreditable conduct, according to its right derivation, is conduct provocative of disbelief. It is that kind of conduct which makes us doubt the professions of its agents, because it is practically inconsistent with the things that they preach.
Many things are done in this world which are very reprehensible, vindictive, cruel, narrow-minded—I might go through a whole catalogue of the vices; but they are not therefore "discreditable." A man who has gone about the world expressing his undying hatred for another man, and then ends by killing him, has done nothing discreditable from his own standard. He has not made you believe less in his professions, but more; for he actually did mean what he said, and has become by his act a creditable witness to the faith that was in him—the dark gospel of hatred. But if, while nourishing a personal hatred, he was at the same time laying it down as the duty of all men to love their enemies, then we have not to wait for the murder in order to look upon him as a tainted and a discredited witness. It is not so much the blood upon his hands as the hatred within his heart which has discredited him as a preacher to others.
109
