p. 89 | Effect of Ridicule

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1867

Effect of Ridicule

EFFECT OF RIDICULE.—A pious lady of the city of Richmond, Va., once left a church in company with her husband, who was an impatient man. She was a woman of unusual vivacity, with a keen perception of the ludicrous, and often playfully sarcastic. As they walked along toward their dwelling, she began to make some amusing and spicy comments on the sermon, which a stranger, a man of very ordinary talents and awkward manners had preached that morning in the absence of the pastor. After running on in this vein of sportive criticism for some time, surprised at the profound silence of her husband, she turned and looked upon his face. He was in tears. That sermon had sent an arrow of conviction to his heart! What must have been the anguish of the conscience-stricken wife, thus arrested in the act of ridiculing a discourse which had been the means of awakening the anxiety of her unrenewed husband.—Religious Herald.