December 22

Kindly reproof

“Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee” (Prov. 9:8).
“Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he . . . shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20

Speak the truth, by all means! Speak it so that no man can mistake the utterance. Be bold and fearless in your rebuke of error and in your keener rebuke of wrongdoing; all Christ’s witnesses are bound to be thus “valiant for the truth,” but be human, and loving, and gentle, and brotherly, the while. If you must deliver the Redeemer’s testimony, deliver it with the Redeemer’s tears. Look, straight-eyed, and kindly, upon the vilest, as a man ought to look upon a man, both royal, although the one is wearing, and the other has pawned his crown.
—W. Morley Punshon.


They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak.
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the Truth they needs must think.

It often happens that friends need remonstrance and even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there is truth in what friend Terence says in his Andria: “Compliance gets us friends, plain speaking hate.”
Plain speaking is the cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment, which is poison to friendship; but compliance is really the cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin.
If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we reprove, there should be no word of insult. . . . But if a man’s ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of Cato’s, as so many of his did, shows great acuteness: “There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often speak the truth, the latter never.” Besides, it is a strange paradox that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not. They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved for it.
—Cicero.

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