Kindly Silence

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 26, 1909

THE kindness of silence is something we might all bestow much oftener than we do. Granted that we do not indulge in scandal, that when we know of the distress and humiliation that has befallen a friend’s household in the wrong-doing of one of its members, we tell the tale only pityingly and with every extenuating circumstance, yet why tell it at all? If it were one of our beloved that had stumbled into sin and disgrace, if one dear to us had yielded to sudden temptation, if our home had been rent with bitterness and dissension, would not the first impulse, a right and natural impulse, be to hide the hurt and stain from every human eye? Should we not bless the friendship that so far as possible closed its eyes and sealed its lips, and that could be trusted not to repeat what it perforce had seen and heard? — Educational Messenger.