By:
William John Hocking, Editor
THE word of God gives a very plain testimony against talebearing or whispering.
In connection with the above passages we commend the following to the attention of our readers.
If we exhibit a man’s vices only, and conceal the proportion which those vices bear to his virtues, we calumniate him quite as effectually as if we ascribe to him a vice he does not possess. A man may have a defective feature or features, and yet the general proportion of his person may be so good, and the general cast of his countenance so pleasing, that the ill effect of the features which are awry is either modified, or entirely carried off. It is an untrue representation of that man to say merely that he has too prominent an eye, or too thick or coarse a lip; that may be the case, but it is not a fair, because it is not a complete description of his personal appearance. And, similarly, if my neighbor has been overtaken (perhaps by surprise) in a grievous fault, and if I, for want of better matter to entertain my company withal, blaze abroad this fault of his, but am wholly silent as to his good character up to that time, and as to the prayers and struggles against that particular sin which he may have made, my witness against him becomes as certainly false in the general impression created by it, and therefore as mischievously injurious, as if I stated of him what was not matter of fact.
In a word, if fair account of a man’s faults and sins is to be given in conversation, the common rule of justice must be attended to, that evidence shall be heard for the defendant; which if it were done, a true verdict might be arrived at by the company. But such evidence never is alleged, nor does any party appear in the interests of the defendant, so that the verdict never can escape being false, and the evidence by which it is arrived at is to all intents and purposes false witness.
This consideration evidently makes it exceedingly difficult for us, and practically all but impossible, to say anything to our neighbor’s disadvantage in common conversation, which shall not be more or less false in its general effect on the minds of the hearers. If they gathered no other conclusion from our words, than that the allegation were true as an isolated fact, it might be all well and good. But this we know from our own experience they never do. With the speed of lightning we all of us proceed from adverse facts to a general unfavorable judgment on a man’s character, and the devil being in the ear of the company as well as in the tongue of the accuser, the thought rises up instantaneously in their minds, “Has such a man indeed done this or that? Then what a villain he must be! how must all confidence in him be at an end!” Extracted.