The Tragedies of Gossip and Slander

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1874

The Tragedies of Gossip and Slander

Great crimes work great wrongs, and the deeper tragedies of life spring from its larger passions; but woful and most melancholy are the uncatalogued tragedies that issue from gossip and detraction; most mournful the shipwreck often made of noble natures and lovely lives by the bitter winds and dead salt waters of slander. So easy to say, yet so hard to disprove—throwing on the innocent and punishing them as guilty, if unable to pluck out the stings they never see, and to silence the words they never heard. Gossip and slander are the deadliest and cruelest weapons man has for his brother’s heart.