Backbiting, again, would seem at first sight to be a sin of the teeth rather than of the tongue, only, no sharpest tooth can tear you when your back is turned like your neighbour’s evil tongue.  Pascal has many dreadful things about the corruption and misery of man, but he has nothing that strikes its terrible barb deeper into all our consciences than this, that if all our friends only knew what we have said about them behind their back, we would not have four friends in all the world.  Neither we would.  I know I would not have one.  How many would you have?  And who would they be?  You cannot name them.  I defy you to name them.  They do not exist.  The tongue can no man tame.

‘Giving of characters’ also takes up a large part of our everyday conversation.  We cannot well help characterising, describing, and estimating one another.  But, as far as possible, when we see the conversation again approaching that dangerous subject, we should call to mind our past remorse; we should suppose our absent neighbour present; we should imagine him in our place and ourselves in his place, and so turn the rising talk into another channel.  For, the truth is, few of us are able to do justice to our neighbour when we begin to discuss and describe him.  Generosity in our talk is far easier for us than justice.  It was this incessant giving of characters that our Lord had in His eye when He said in His Sermon on the Mount, Judge not.  But our Lord might as well never have uttered that warning word for all the attention we give it.  For we go on judging one another and sentencing one another as if we were entirely and in all things blameless ourselves, and as if God had set us up in our blamelessness in His seat of judgment over all our fellows.  How seldom do we hear any one say in a public debate or in a private conversation, I don’t know; or, It is no matter of mine; or, I feel that I am not in possession of all the facts; or, It may be so, but I must not judge.  We never hear such things as these said.  No one pays the least attention to the Preacher on the Mount.  And if any one says to us, I must not judge, we never forgive him, because his humility and his obedience so condemn all our ill-formed, prejudiced, rash, and ill-natured judgments of our neighbour.  Since, therefore, so Butler sums up, it is so hard for us to enter on our neighbour’s character without offending the law of Christ, we should learn to decline that kind of conversation altogether, and determine to get over that strong inclination most of us have, to be continually talking about the concerns, the behaviour, and the deserts of our neighbours.