Where no good motive can be assigned, it may
become our duty to suspend our judgment till evidence can be
had.
In the application of this rule, it is an undoubted duty to
exercise a commendable prudence, by refusing to repose any
important trust to the keeping of persons who may be strangers
to us, and whose trustworthiness we have never seen tried. But
no possible good, but incalculable evil may and does arise from
the too common practice of placing all conduct, the source of
which we do not fully understand, to the worst of intentions.
How often is the gentle, timid soul discouraged, and driven
perhaps to despondency, by finding its 'good evil spoken of;'
and a well-meant but mistaken action loaded with an evil design!
If the world would but sedulously set about reforming itself
on this one point, who can calculate the change it would
produce-the evil it would annihilate, and the happiness it would
confer! None but an all-seeing eye could at once embrace so vast
a result. A result, how desirable! and one that can be brought
about only by the most simple process-that of every individual
seeing to it that he commit not this sin himself. For why should
we allow in ourselves, the very fault we most dislike, when
committed against us? Shall we not at least aim at consistency?
Had she possessed less generous self-sacrifice, more knowledge of
the world and of business matters in general, and had she
failed to take it for granted that others were like herself, and
would, when her turn came to need, do as she had done, and
find it 'more blessed to give than to receive,' she might have
laid by something for the future.
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