LEAVING OFF CONTENTION BEFORE IT BE MEDDLED WITH.
WE are advised to leave off contention before it be meddled with, by
one usually accounted a very wise man. Had he never given the world
any other evidence of superior wisdom, this admonition alone would
have been sufficient to have established his claims thereto. It
shows that he had power to penetrate to the very root of a large
share of human misery. For what is the great evil in our condition
here? Is it not misunderstanding, disagreement, alienation,
contention, and the passions and results flowing from these? Are not
contempt, and hatred, and strife, and alteration, and slander, and
evil-speaking, the things hardest to bear, and most prolific of
suffering, in the lot of human life? The worst woes of life are such
as spring from, these sources.
Is there any cure for these maladies? Is there anything to prevent
or abate these exquisite sufferings? The wise man directs our
attention to a remedial preventive in the advice above referred to.
His counsel to those whose lot unites them in the same local
habitations and name to those who are leagued in friendship or
business, in the changes of sympathy and the chances of collision,
is, to suppress anger or dissatisfaction, to be candid and
charitable in judging, and, by all means, to leave off contention
before it be meddled with.
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