Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/216

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Side Talks with Girls

and pouring acid upon it, is not that which Christ would have commended.

THE WAYS OF CHARITY

Many hundred years ago the God-Man said that only those who were without sin should dare throw a stone at a sinner. So you who are going to walk in the ways of charity must learn, first of all, to control your tongue. You have no right to judge any human being. You know nothing of the temptation, you know nothing of the temperament that made it so easy to yield, and you do not know what the motive was when the poor sinner first started to do what afterward turned out to be all wrong. You know that she told a lie. You don't know what she told that lie for. That it was wrong nobody can doubt. Maybe it was told to hide poverty; maybe it was told to protect some one else; maybe it was told without thought. Nothing can make it right. But be a little charitable in your judgment. Try and put yourself in that girl's place, and if you succeed in doing that you will be surprised to discover that under the same circumstances you would probably have done much worse.

Sometimes people are branded with sins that they do not commit; but the world accuses them and the uncharitable stand afar off and condemn,