Make the best of others. For that is, in fact, what our Lord means by “judge not.” It is what we should most naturally express by “Do not be critical.” Because a thing is strange or new to you, because it does not fall in with your ideas, do not condemn it off-hand, but try to appreciate it with sympathy first of all. Make the best of every thing and every person. And there is no doubt that if after looking for the good points in any idea, or undertaking, or person, you are at last bound to condemn, the weight attaching to your adverse verdict will depend very largely on whether you have escaped the reputation of being a “critical” and censorious person. The condemnation of one who is always finding fault carries no moral weight. I say, If at last you are bound to condemn, and that may be the Christian’s duty. For here, again, as throughout this Sermon, we must notice our Lord’s proverbial method, otherwise we may misinterpret altogether the temper which our Lord here commends. There is a temper of universal toleration very prevalent in our age, both in conversation and in literature; which can indeed tolerate everything, because it has no fixed standards of right and wrong, of true and false, at all. But it is clear enough that this was not what our Lord meant to recommend; it would be so utterly antagonistic to His own character. No one is severer in discriminating judgement than our Lord when the occasion requires it. More than this, our Lord did deliberately intend that His Church, and the members of His Church, should have standards of goodness and truth which should enable them――aye, which should require them when duty called――to condemn their own brethren. A passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel which has been referred to already is clear upon this. “If thy brother trespass against thee”――are you to say, “It is of no account. It is not my business to condemn?” No. When it is not a question of the love of criticizing or of uncharitable judgement, but of maintaining the law of right and wrong, then it becomes our business to judge, and after consideration and patience to condemn. “Go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican. Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”[75]