The judgment of our fellow-creatures upon our acts and our characters is, practically speaking, an inevitable accompaniment of human life.
I. Human judgments keep order in the world of thought and in the world of conduct a certain sort of order, at any rate. (1) They do not, for instance, go far wrong when they are brought face to face with a great public crime which, as being such, is patent, whether to the natural or to Christian conscience. Take, for instance, such crimes as the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or the massacre in Glencoe. At the present day no writer of character, of any persuasion, or in any country, would venture to defend these acts. By the light of the natural conscience of man, by the light of the principles of the gospel of Christ, they are condemned irrevocably. (2) Again, the common judgment of man does not err when it pronounces upon the more personal acts of an individual, supposing them to be well attested. The betrayal of our Lord by Judas is an act upon the character of which all men can pronounce a judgment. An ingenious writer of the last generation tried to show that Judas was not so bad after all. The conscience of man listens for a moment to these ingenious audacities. It listens; perhaps it is indignant; perhaps it smiles; it passes on; it forgets them. (3) Once more, the judgment of man ventures, at times, a step farther to pronounce with reserves upon character. These judgments are uncertain, tentative, and partial.
II. St. Paul has more reasons than one for treating the conclusions of the Corinthians as a very small thing. (1) The Corinthian judgment about him was like a portrait painter's sketch at a first sitting. They had not yet had time to learn what a longer acquaintance might have taught them. (2) This estimate was a strangely biassed one. What they called a judgment was, in reality, a formulated prejudice. (3) The Corinthians were passing judgment on a point which they had no real means of investigating. (4) St. Paul did not feel or affect indifference to the question whether he was or was not faithful. In matters of the soul he would go straight to the fountain of absolute justice. "He that judgeth me is the Lord." The knowledge that that judgment was going on day by day the knowledge that it would be proclaimed from heaven here-after relieved him of all anxiety whatever as to the opinion which might be pronounced on him at Corinth. "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment."
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 995.
Reference: 1 Corinthians 4:3. J. M. Neale, Sermons in a Religious House,2nd series, vol. i., p. 190.