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Kindness

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 12, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 2.

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Kindness.

Kindness is as cheap as it is beautiful. It may be given in word or look without diminishing aught of our wealth. With courtesies alone we may illuminate our pathway and pluck down blessings which no gold could purchase. To be brotherly, befriend and cheer and console as far as in us lies—these are the crowning graces of humanity—and all these are born of kindness. It is anger, breeding hate and contumely, that has filled the earth with misery and ruin. Anger between kindred and races, before which all that is beautiful in man vanishes, leaving only the wild, fierce animal of his being; families divided, friends parted, communities at feud—these are the fruits of anger. But from kindness, in proportion as this has been the ruling spirit among men, peace and happiness have followed. The home heart has been the center of a paradise, and the community of Elysium. Verily, "better is a dry crust and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifice with strife." Let us study and strive to be kind, no matter how seemingly trivial the occasion, nor how small the promised fruit. It is the only language of our nature that is universal and irresistible.