Other Things Being Equal…

To the ever recurring question of judging others, of the power to appraise the motives, the actions, the intent of other people, we sometimes hear applied the phrase “other things being equal,” or the phrase “under the same circumstances.”

In physical factors this would seem to be so. We can weigh weights; we can measure measures; we can calculate speed and temperature and time and make things seem to be “equal under the same circumstances.” But it isn’t so easy to weigh people personally⎯as to the intangibles. It isn’t so easy to know what’s inside; in the mind, the heart, the spirit, what goes into the making of a man.

Experiences are not equal. Environments are not equal. The attitudes and influence and example of others are not equal in their impact upon us. Furthermore we arrived in the world at different times, with different talents and different opportunities.

“… We do have a suspicion,” as William Feather has said, “that it is nearly impossible for anybody to put himself in another’s place. Who is this man who asks you to put yourself in his place?… The differences are endless….” “… hence,” added another observer, “the constant use of parables in our Savior’s teaching, that we might always be taught to turn from the letter to the spirit;… hence the persistent command to look from the outward to the inward,… form the act to the motive, from external, particular words and deeds to the character as a whole, from the things which are seen to the things which are unseen….”

William Penn has thus said in summary: “… the true Spring of the Actions of Men is as Invisible as their Hearts;…” There must be laws; there must be rules. There must be enforcing of the laws and rules. And those who are called upon to judge cannot escape the doing of their sincere duty. But the longer we live, the closer we must come to know how hasty and wrong mere men can be in their estimate of others, and that the spirit is inseparable from the letter of the law. And it is comforting to know that, ultimately, the great just Judge of all of us will take all things into account, and will not err in measuring the man.