SCOLDING

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 20, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 16.

Scolding is mostly a habit. There is not much meaning to it. It is often the result of nervousness and an irritable condition of both mind and body. A person is tired, or annoyed at some trivial cause, and forthwith commences finding fault with everything and everybody in reach. Scolding is a habit very easily formed. It is astonishing how soon one who indulges in it at all becomes addicted to it and confirmed in it. It is an unreasoning and unreasonable habit. Persons who once get in the way of scolding always find something to scold about. If there is nothing else, they fall to scolding at the mere absence of anything to scold at. It is an extremely disagreeable habit. It is contagious. Once introduced into a family, it is pretty certain in a short time to affect all the members.

People in the country more readily fall into the habit of scolding than people in town. Women contract the habit more frequently than men. This may be because they live more constantly in the house, in a confined and heated atmosphere, very trying to the nervous system and the health in general; and it may be, partly, that their natures are more susceptible and their sensitiveness more easily wounded. The proper remedy for the habit, if formed, is to experience an endowment of that divine love shed abroad in the new heart by the Holy Ghost, the characteristics of which are that it “is not easily provoked,” “thinketh no evil,” and “beareth all things.”—Bible Banner.