The Right Mode of Giving and Receiving Reproof.
I. Men will profess, and perhaps unthinkingly believe, that they derive the most essential benefits derivable from a true friend; but if he shall offer to impart them he becomes an enemy. The great cause of this perversity and repugnance is that it cannot be but the plain truth (by whatever voice) must say many things that are unpleasing. All censure is so, as it hurts the most quick, and delicate, and constant of all feelings, self-love. And censure! who dares to say in how many points the full unmitigated application of truth to him would not be censure? And who dares to say how many of these points might not be struck upon by a clear-sighted friend, that should unreservedly express the truth? Hence the disposition to regard him as an enemy. Other things contributing to this feeling towards him are (1) a want of the real, earnest desire to be in all things set right; (2) pride, reacting against a fellow-mortal and fellow-sinner; (3) a difference of judgment on the matters in question; (4) an unfavourable opinion or surmise as to the motives of the teller of this truth.
II. (1) Those who have to tell unpleasant truth should well exercise themselves to understand what they speak of. (2) It should be the instructor's aim that the authority may be conveyed in the truth itself, and not seem to be assumed by him as the speaker of it, that he may be the mere conveyer of the force of the subject. (3) The teller of unpleasing truths should watch to select favourable times and occasions (mollia tempora fandi) when an inquisitive or docile disposition is most apparent, when some circumstance or topic naturally leads without formality or abruptness to the point, when there appears to be in the way the least to put the person reproved in the attitude of pride and hostile self-defence.
J. Foster, Lectures,1st series, p. 43.
Reference: Galatians 4:16. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 96.