your character than
those lighter errors of which I have spoken. Though you may sink so far,
in course of time, as to consider even a direct lie a very small
transgression of the law of God, you will never be able to persuade
yourself that it is entirely free from sin. The injury, too, to our
neighbour, of a direct lie, can be so much more easily guarded against,
that, for the sake of others, I am far more earnest in warning you
against equivocation than against decided falsehood. It is sadly
difficult for the injured person to ward off the effects of a deceitful
glance, a misleading action, an artful insinuation. No earthly defence
is of any avail here, as the sorrows of many a wounded heart can
testify; but for such injured ones there is a sure, though it may be a
long-suffering, Defender. He is the Judge of all the earth; and even in
this world he will visit, with a punishment inevitably involved in the
consequences of their crime, those who have in any manner deceived their
neighbour to his hurt.

I do not, however, accuse you of exaggerating or equivocating from
malice alone: no,--more frequently it is for the sake of mere
amusement, or, at the worst, in cowardly self-defence; that is, you
prefer throwing the blame by insinuation upon an innocent person to
bearing courageously what you deserve yourself. In most cases, indeed,
you can plead in excuse that the blame is not of any serious nature;
that the insinuated accusation is slight enough to be entirely harmless:
so it may appear to you, but so it frequently happens not to be. This
insinuated accusation, appearing to you so unimportant, may have some
peculiar relations that make it more injurious to the slandered one than
the original blame could have been to yourself. It may be the means of
separating her from her chief friend, or shaking her influence in
quarters where perhaps it was of great importance to her that it should
be preserved unimpaired. When we lay sinful hands on the complicated
machinery of God's providence, it is impossible for us to see how far
the derangement may extend.

You may, during the course of this coming day, have an opportunity of
giving your own version of a matter in which another was concerned with
you, and in which, if the blame is thrown on her, she will have no
opportunity of defending herself. Be on your guard, then; have a noble
courage; fear nothing but the meanness and the wickedness of accusing
the absent and the defence