By J.R. Miller
How often do we hear as an excuse for some harm done or committed, "I did not mean to do it. I had no thought of causing any such trouble." Certainly "lack of thought" draws after it a great train of evils, and leaves behind it a broad trail of cost and sorrow. We see the results of carelessness in all departments of life, and in all degrees, from the most trivial, causing only inconvenience and confusion, to the most far reaching, casting a shadow into eternity.
A nurse fell down the stairs with an infant in her arms, and fifty years afterward there was a humpbacked man creeping along the streets. A child threw a piece of lemon peel on the sidewalk, and there was an accident an hour after, in which an old lady was severely injured; so severely that she will never be able to walk again. A switch-tender opened the wrong switch, and the heavy train dashed into a great building that stood at the end of the short side-track, and lives were lost amid the wreck. An operator gave a careless touch to his instrument, and there was a terrible collision on the rail. A boy shot an arrow from his bow; it went whizzing away from the string, and a comrade is blind for the rest of his life. A woman poured oil from a can into her stove to hasten her fire, and there was an explosion, and an outburst of flame, which burned down the building around her. A young man pointed a gun, in sport, at his best friend, playfully saying that he would shoot him, and one noble youth was carried to his grave, and another goes through life with an awful shadow of memory hanging over him, which quenches all his joy and makes all life dark for him. A druggist's clerk compounded the prescription in haste, and in an hour a sick girl was dying in terrible pain and convulsions, from the poison in the prescription.
A beautiful young lady danced at a party one chill midnight, and then raised a window in a side room to let the fresh air fan her hot cheeks; and in a little while they followed her to an untimely grave. What long chapters of accidents are every year recorded, all of which result from carelessness! A little careful thought on the part of the responsible people would have prevented all of them, with their attendant horrors and their long train of suffering and sorrow.
There are other illustrations. Millions of letters every year go wrong, fail to reach their destination, and find their way to the dead-letter office, because the writers carelessly misdirect them. A gentleman lost an overcoat. His suspicions fell on a neighbor, and a trap was laid to detect his guilt; but after a great deal of wicked feeling--the coat was found precisely where the owner had left it. Many a servant is abused and wronged and cruelly treated, on charges with similar ground. A Boston man coming home in a drenching rain, felt for his watch at his doorstep, to see the time; but it was missing. He had been robbed. He remembered it all--just a few doors back a man rubbed against him in passing. He was the thief. He flew after him, overtook him, raised his umbrella and demanded his watch, or he would strike. The terrified man handed it to him, and the good citizen went home, proud of his courage and success. The morning paper told of a bold highway robbery, a most daring affair. The robber lifted an enormous club, and was about to kill the quiet pedestrian. It happened just close by this gentleman's house. "That is strange," he said, as his wife read the account at breakfast; "I was robbed of my watch, and overtook the thief at that very spot, and recovered it." His wife assured him there must be some mistake, as he had left his watch at home the morning before, and she had since noticed a strange one on the bureau. So it turned out that he was the robber.
There is a great deal of the same lack of carefulness in other ways, whose consequences are not so manifest, and yet are no less painful and destructive. A man speaks light and careless words, perhaps in humorous mood, perhaps in impatience and irritation, and while the laughter goes around--a heart is writhing in agony, pierced by the cruel barb. He did not mean to give pain to that tender friend; he would not do it intentionally for the world; but he has left a wound and a pang there, which no after kindness can altogether heal and soothe. There is a manifold ministry of pain and wrong, wrought thus by carelessly uttered words. Some people appear always to say the very things they ought not to say. Hawthorne says that awkwardness is a sin which has no forgiveness in heaven or on earth. And surely carelessness is laden with the guilt of countless griefs and sorrows, which no after-penitence can ever remove, or even palliate and soften.
A person's name is mentioned in a certain circle, or in a quiet conversation, and the most inexcusable liberties taken in speaking of him, his character, his business, and his acts. No one means to do him harm or injustice; and yet, in the guise of confidence, words are uttered which are like so many cruel stabs.
Few habits are more common than this; and yet what rights have we to say one defamatory word of another, or start, even by a hint, a suspicion of him? We may plead that we have no intention of injuring him--but the pleas avails nothing. We are responsible not only for our deliberate, purposed acts--but just as much so for the accidental and unconscious effects which go out from us. They say that every word spoken into the air goes quivering on, in undying reverberations, forever. Whatever we may say of this statement as a scientific fact--we are well aware of the infinite and far-reaching consequences of the smallest words as moral forces. The poet's fancy is not a mere play of imagination. The song we sing, and the word we speak--we shall indeed find again, from beginning to end, somewhere in the eternal future, stored away in the nooks and crannies of other lives, and influencing them for good or ill, for pain or pleasure.
There is no part of this life we are living, day by day, that is not vital with influence. We call certain things small and infinitesimal, and indeed they seem so; but when we remember that there is not one of them that may not set in motion a train of eternal consequences, dare we call anything insignificant? We are evermore touching other lives, oftener unconsciously than consciously, and our touch today may decide a destiny. Our silent example, as well as our words and deeds, is vital, and throbbing with influence. There is need, therefore, for the most unwearying watchfulness over every act and word, lest in a moment of unheeding, we start a train of consequences that may leave sorrow or ruin in its track forever.
Nowhere is this more important than in dealing with souls, as spiritual teachers and guides. Milton somewhere says, that bad advice may slay not only a life--but an immortality. Bad or careless religious counsel may wreck a soul's destiny. Should a teacher ever sit down before a class of immortal souls, looking up with confidence for guidance, without the most diligent and thoughtful preparation as to what to say to them? Carelessness anywhere else may be pardoned, sooner than here.
