WHAT TO SAY, AND HOW TO SAY IT
By John McMillan
JOHN MCMILLAN
(Rainbow, Cal.) The power of speech is a God-given faculty. Its proper use is a means of much good, and its improper use is a potent factor of evil. Some, like the diplomat and the flatterer, use their words to hide their thoughts. Some—the egotist and the self-righteous—use their words to proclaim their own goodness. The happy medium is “for your neighbor’s good to edification.” In conversation there are two subjects that should be avoided—ourselves and our neighbors. The frequent use of the “big I” is bad form, in either conversation or writing, and lowers us in the esteem of hearer or reader. There are but two laudable excuses for talking about our neighbor. First, if our neighbor has met with some good fortune, either expected or unexpected; we should heartily comply with his request to rejoice with him. Second, if our neighbor has met with some loss or sorrow, we should know it, and be ready to help or comfort, and thus “bear one another’s burdens.” But anything bearing a semblance to the work of a busybody in other men’s matters is evil, and only evil. In this age there are plenty of topics for conversation, without talking about persons. The readers of the REVIEW, Signs, Good Health, and other good publications, should be full of matter to cheer one another, and to impart cheer to those less favored. If we are Bible students, which we all ought to be, the subject of “the sure word of prophecy,” which is being fulfilled, is a theme worthy of our attention. Now that we are evidently in the last days of probation, we should use every effort to rescue the erring, and should watch unto prayer against every effort of the enemy to lull us to sleep while passing over the enchanted ground. Cheerfulness is always in order, but trifling and flippancy are out of place anywhere. We must be redeemed from “our vain conversation,” if we ever “see the King in His beauty.” “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” It is by cultivation, pruning, and grafting, that we obtain acceptable “fruit unto eternal life.”