Go not forth hastily to strive.
The worst and best ways of treating social dissensions
The social dissensions that are rife in our world are incontestable proofs that humanity has fallen from its normal condition. There is society in heaven, but no social differences or strifes. The text indicates the best and the worst way of treating such dissensions.
I. The worst way. “Go not forth hastily to strive.”
1. Precipitant strife is bad in itself. Men should never be hasty in yielding to a passion. They should make the passion, however strong and tumultuous for the moment, the subject of thought, and by thought should subdue, purify, and direct it.
2. Precipitant strife exposes to shame. “Lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbour hath put thee to shame.”
II. The best way. “Debate thy cause with thy neighbour himself,” etc. The direction here seems to imply three things--
1. That an interview is to be obtained at once with the offender. “Debate thy cause with thy neighbour himself.”
2. That an interview is to be obtained in order to talk the offence over. “Debate thy cause.”
3. That the offence must be thus debated before the secret is divulged to another. “Discover not a secret to another.”
4. That should the secret be divulged to another the pacific objects of the interview might be nullified. “Lest he that heareth it,” etc. (Homilist.)