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Detraction

A. Hugh Clark

A great man hath said, "There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men." No truer statement was ever made than that. And yet, some men in the church, when they have developed a dislike for another, spend their time in no other way than going about seeking to detract from his worth in the minds of the brethren. Such detraction only proves the weakness as well as the meanness of the one who employs it, and no one will long be fooled as to his motives.

Sometimes men will even sacrifice the church itself in their efforts to discredit another. They are so blinded by their feelings that success becomes failure, and that which is straight looks crooked to them; they literally forget even the truth in their effort to put themselves forward, and in their efforts would destroy that for which they profess their greatest devotion.

Such men are pitiable because, in the providence of God, they are doomed to failure before they start and, in their folly, they destroy themselves instead of establishing themselves as they had hoped to do. Surely to be constantly carping at another, seeking for and exaggerating petty blemishes in his character, real or imaginative, putting an unfavorable construction on his language, or "damning with faint praise" his deeds, betrays on the part of the detractor a conscious inability to accomplish his ends legitimately and a willingness to stoop too low for a Christian. No man not under a delusion as to his own importance or laboring under the influence of an evil passion will spend his time in this manner. There are too many more worthy tasks to which he can and will apply himself. 

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