You think that this is a story? Yes, it is a story; but it is a true story. And the sorrowful thing about it is that just such unkind and unfounded judgments as that formed by the little school girls are passed every day upon {208} innocent men and women. You yourselves pass judgment, without any evidence on which to base that judgment. You condemn your playmates for this or for that. You find fault with what your parents do, not knowing the many problems they have to solve. You criticize the bishop of your ward, or the president of your stake, or even the president of the Church, without knowledge of a single item of the vast amount of information which he has and which compelled him to do as he did. It may be that some of your associates have faults. Those faults stand out glaringly enlarged to you. You are offended by them. You are prompted to criticize, or to try to correct the defects. But you forget that you may have faults as glaringly apparent to your associates as theirs are to you. You do not stop to think that the little girls who suspected Mary Jones were also guilty of a grievous offense in judging and condemning without cause. You forget what the Lord Jesus taught, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother. Let me pluck out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." [Sidenote: The mote and the beam.] Is it not simple and common sense? How can a man see clearly to correct the faults of others, when his vision is distorted by his own faults? Have you ever set a stick into a pool of clear water? Have you noticed how the stick has been distorted in size and shape? The light {209} waves passing from water to air, or from air to water, are refracted, bent, so that you do not get a correct image of the object immersed. Just so is it when we, who are immersed in our own faults and weaknesses, attempt to pluck the mote from a brother's eye. Our vision is defective; the image is distorted; we are ourselves in worse condition than our brother. [Sidenote: What Jesus said.] Jesus set Himself strongly against such unkind judgment as that passed by the two little school girls, and as that we are tempted every day to Jesus pass upon our neighbors. "Judge not," He taught, "that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."