4. Detraction injures those into whose ears it instils its poisonous suggestions, requiring them to connive at the mischief it does to worth and virtue, and desiring them to entertain the same unjust and uncharitable thoughts as itself. 5. The detractor _is an enemy to himself_. He raises against himself animosity and disfavour. Men of self-respect, conscious of their own honest motives and upright actions, will not submit to his unrighteous detraction. They will stand on their own consciousness of rectitude, and, with Right on their side, will cause him to fall into the pit which he has digged for others. 6. The detractor is likely to have given him the same that he gives to others. If he has in him that which appears laudable, how can he expect commendation for it, when he refuses it to others with similar claims? How can any one admit him to have real worth who will not admit another to have any? The preceding observations are sufficient to exhibit the nature, causes, and effects of the fault of the detractor. This fault is wide-spread in its existence. It affects nearly all classes of society. Does it not too widely prevail in circles of Christian professors? Is there not too much of this kind of talk in the companies of ministers of religion? Among men of all ranks, occupations, and ages of life this spirit is too frequently and too powerfully operating. In the courts of princes, in the halls of science, in the schools of literature, the detractor may be found with his deteriorating and damaging tongue. The evening social circle, the festive board, the railway carriage, the two or three walking or sitting in the garden's shades, are not exempt from the presence of this detracting demon. My reader, be you among the honourable exceptions, with whom detraction shall find no life. And as you would not possess it in yourself, do not patronize it in others, although mixed in a sweet liquor, and offered in a golden cup. Covet to be among those charitable spirits which put the best interpretation upon everything rather than the worst; which approve and praise rather than censure and condemn; which offer the fragrance of the rose rather than wound with the thorn; which present the jewel rather than point out the flaw in it; which take the fly out of the pot of ointment rather than put one in. This is the spirit of nobleness, because the spirit of charity and of God. XVIII. THE GRUMBLER. "Still falling out with this and this, And finding something still amiss; More peevish, cross, and splenetic, Than dog distract, or monkey sick." BUTLER.