" But this is a
dangerous and casuistical path to tread.
It may be justified perhaps on the medical theory that if you tell a
man he will get well, even if you consider him to be doomed, he is more
likely to get well than if you tell him that you consider him to be
doomed. But it is surely wrong to display no more moral indignation in
the case of a vigorous person who has perversely indulged some
temptation which he might have resisted, than in the case of one who is
hampered by inheritance with a violent predisposition to moral evil.
Even the most ardent moralist ought to be true to what he knows to be
the truth. The method of Christ seems here again to differ from the
method of the Christian teacher. Christ reserved his denunciations for
the complacency of virtuous people. We do not see him rebuking the
sinner; his rebukes are rather heaped upon the righteous. He seems to
have had nothing but compassion for the sins that brought their own
obvious punishment, and to have been indignant only with the sins that
brought material prosperity with them. He treated the outcast as his
friend, the respectable as his enemy. He seems to have held that sin at
least taught people to make allowances, to forgive, to love, and that
this was the nearest way to the Father's heart. Christ was very
critical, and relentlessly exposed those of whom he disapproved, but he
was never critical of weakness.
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