"But would you not tell them how wicked it is?" I asked.
"They know already that it is wicked to tell lies; but they do not feel that they are wicked in making the assertions they do. The less said about the abstract truth, and the more shown of practical truth, the better for those whom any one would teach to forsake lying. So, at least, it appears to me. I despair of teaching others, except by learning myself."
"If you do no more than that, you will hardly produce an appreciable effect in a lifetime."
"Why should it be appreciated?" rejoined Miss Clare.
"I should have said, on the contrary," interposed Mr. Blackstone, addressing Mr. Morley, "if you do less—for more you cannot do—you will produce no effect whatever."
"We have no right to make it a condition of our obedience, that we shall see its reflex in the obedience of others," said Miss Clare. "We have to pull out the beam, not the mote."
"Are you not, then, to pull the mote out of your brother's eye?" said Judy.
"In no case and on no pretence, until you have pulled the beam out of your own eye," said Mr. Blackstone; "which I fancy will make the duty of finding fault with one's neighbor a rare one; for who will venture to say he has qualified himself for the task?"
It was no wonder that a silence followed upon this; for the talk had got to be very serious for a dinner-table. Lady Bernard was the first to speak. It was easier to take up the dropped thread of the conversation than to begin a new reel.
"It cannot be denied," she said, "whoever may be to blame for it, that the separation between the rich and the poor has either been greatly widened of late, or, which involves the same practical necessity, we have become more aware of the breadth and depth of a gulf which, however it may distinguish their circumstances, ought not to divide them from each other. Certainly the rich withdraw themselves from the poor. Instead, for instance, of helping them to bear their burdens, they leave the still struggling poor of whole parishes to sink into hopeless want, under the weight of those who have already sunk beyond recovery. I am not sure that to shoot them would not involve less injustice. At all events, he that hates his brother is a murderer."