ou when your
back is turned like your neighbour's evil tongue. Pascal has many
dreadful things about the corruption and misery of man, but he has
nothing that strikes its terrible barb deeper into all our consciences
than this, that if all our friends only knew what we have said about them
behind their back, we would not have four friends in all the world.
Neither we would. I know I would not have one. How many would you have?
And who would they be? You cannot name them. I defy you to name them.
They do not exist. The tongue can no man tame.

'Giving of characters' also takes up a large part of our everyday
conversation. We cannot well help characterising, describing, and
estimating one another. But, as far as possible, when we see the
conversation again approaching that dangerous subject, we should call to
mind our past remorse; we should suppose our absent neighbour present; we
should imagine him in our place and ourselves in his place, and so turn
the rising talk into another channel. For, the truth is, few of us are
able to do justice to our neighbour when we begin to discuss and describe
him. Generosity in our talk is far easier for us than justice. It was
this incessant giving of characters that our Lord had in His eye when He
said in His Sermon on the Mount, Judge not. But our Lord might as well
never have uttered that warning word for all the attention we give it.
For we go on judging one another and sentencing one another as if we were
entirely and in all things blameless ourselves, and as if God had set us
up in our blamelessness in His seat of judgment over all our fellows. How
seldom do we hear any one say in a public debate or in a private
conversation, I don't know; or, It is no matter of mine; or, I feel that
I am not in possession of all the facts; or, It may be so, but I must not
judge. We never hear such things as these said. No one pays the least
attention to the Preacher on the Mount. And if any one says to us, I
must not judge, we never forgive him, because his humility and his
obedience so condemn all our ill-formed, prejudiced, rash, and
ill-natured judgments of our neighbour. Since, therefore, so Butler sums
up, it is so hard for us to enter on our neighbour's character without
offending the law of Christ, we should learn to decline that kind of
conversation altogether, and determine to get over that strong
inclination most of us have, to be continually talking about the
concerns