548 TALKS ON <( AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER "
Then He says: ^
First, to do no hurt. Three sins there are which work
more harm than all else In the world—gossip, cruelty, and
superstition—because they are sins against love. Against
these three the man who would ml his fteart with the love of
God must watch ceaselessly.
When you hear that three sins there are which work
mdre harm than all others, naturally you think of mur-
der and robbery and things of that sort, and perhaps
wonder to find these comparatively ordinary things,
gossip, cruelty and superstition put at the head of the
list. But you have to take into account the quality as
well as the amount of them existing in the world.
Murder and robbery are universally recognised
as serious sins, and consequently you get com-
paratively little of them, unless you» dignify them
by the name of war;—then you get any amount.
But using the ordinary' terms, there is not much
of such things, as they are universally reprobated
by everybody. But gossip, for example—see
how universal that is in the outer world! And
if you think of the hSrm it (foes in any indi-
vidual case, of the great amount of mental suffer-
ing which it may cause, and of the depreciation of
ideals which it often brings about, and then if you
multiply that by the millions of cases which are going
on all the time, you will very soon see that it does do
more harm than the other apparently greater crimes.
The few isolated murders do not work so much harm
as gossip. You have the gossip of millions, and the