Easy to Hurt Others

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We are so related to each other that we are continually leaving impressions on those we touch. It is easier to do harm than good to other lives. There is a quality in the human soul which makes it take more readily and retain more permanently touches of sin than touches of holiness. Among the ruins of some old temple there was found a slab which bore very faintly and dimly the image of the king, and in deep and clear indentations the print of a dog’s foot. The king’s beauty was less clear than the marks of the animal’s tread. So human lives are apt to take less readily and deeply, to retain less indelibly, the touches of spiritual beauty, and more clearly and permanently the marks and impressions of evil. It needs, therefore, in us infinite carefulness and watchfulness, as we walk ever amid other lives, lest by some word, or look, or act, or influence of ours we hurt them irreparably.

—J. R. Miller

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