Sympathy for the Erring
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You have done much to injure Brother D; and I advise you to repent
of this wrong as heartily as you committed it. In the name of the
Master, I entreat you to shake yourself from human influences and
close your ears to gossiping reports. Let no person put a testimony in
your mouth; but let God, rather than men who are unconsecrated at
home and abroad, give you a burden for His cause.
Brother C needs the softening, refining Spirit of God in his heart.
He needs to exercise it in his home. “Let love be without dissimula-
tion.” Let the arbitrary, dictatorial, censorious spirit be put away from
his home, with all malice. The same overbearing, judging spirit will
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be carried out in the church. If his feelings are somewhat softened
for the time being, he will act in a more kindly manner; but if they
happen to be the opposite, he will act accordingly. Self-control and
self-discipline he has not exercised. Where Brother D has one defect,
his judges and those who condemned him have ten.
Brother A, why did you not fully take the part of the oppressed?
Why did you not compromise this matter? Why did you not lift your
voice, as did your Saviour, and say: “He that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone”? You have made a fearful mistake, which
may result in the loss of more souls than one, notwithstanding you did
it ignorantly. Had one word of tender, genuine pity been expressed
by you to Brother D, it would have been registered to your account
in heaven. But you had no more sense of the work you were doing
for time and for eternity than had those who condemned Christ; and
you have judged and condemned your Saviour in the person of His
saint. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Hypocrisy always met the
severest rebuke from Jesus; while the veriest sinners who came to Him
in sincere repentance were received, pardoned, and comforted.
Did you think Brother D could be made to believe that wrong
was right and right was wrong, because his brethren would have him
believe it? He was diseased and nervous. Everything looked dark and
uncertain to him. His confidence in you and Brother C was gone, and
to whom should he look? He was censured for one thing and then for
another, until he became confused, distracted, and desperate. Those
who drove him to this state have committed the greater sin.
Where was compassion, even on the ground of common humanity?
Worldlings would not, as a general rule, have been so careless, so