Nowhere a word about human institutions, about tribunals, to show how they were affected by the warning, "_Judge not_." Did Jesus sanction courts of justice, or did he not? To this very natural question I found no reply--as if it was evident that from the moment a Christian took his seat on the judge's bench he might not only judge his neighbor, but condemn him to death. I turned to other writers, Greek, Catholic, Protestant, to the Tübingen school, to the historical school. Everywhere, even by the most liberal commentators, the words in question were interpreted as an injunction against evil-speaking. But why, contrary to the spirit of the whole doctrine of Jesus, are these words interpreted in so narrow a way as to exclude courts of justice from the injunction, "_Judge not_"? Why the supposition that Jesus in forbidding the comparatively light offence of speaking evil of one's neighbor did not forbid, did not even consider, the more deliberate judgment which results in punishment inflicted upon the condemned? To all this I got no response; not even an allusion to the least possibility that the words "to judge" could be used as referring to a court of justice, to the tribunals from whose punishments so many millions have suffered. Moreover, when the words, "_Judge not, condemn not_," are under discussion, the cruelty of judging in courts of justice is passed over in silence, or else commended. The commentators all declare that in Christian societies tribunals are necessary, and in no way contrary to the law of Jesus. Realizing this, I began to doubt the sincerity of the commentators; and I did what I should have done in the first place; I turned to the textual translations of the words which we render "to judge" and "to condemn." In the original these words are [Greek: krinô] and [Greek: katadikazô]. The defective translation in James of [Greek: katalaleô], which is rendered "to speak evil," strengthened my doubts as to the correct translation of the others. When I looked through different versions of the Gospels, I found [Greek: katadikazô] rendered in the Vulgate by _condemnare_, "to condemn"; in the Sclavonic text the rendering is equivalent to that of the Vulgate; Luther has _verdammen_, "to speak evil of." These divergent renderings increased my doubts, and I was obliged to ask again the meaning of [Greek: krinô], as used by the two evangelists, and of [Greek: katadikazô], as used by Luke who, scholars tell us, wrote very correct Greek. How would these words be translated by a man who knew nothing of the evangelical creed, and who had before him only the phrases in which they are used?