p. 6 | OUR WORDS by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 15, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 50.

OUR WORDS.

By T.

In view of both the elevating effect of “words fitly spoken,” and the defiling effect of evil and impure words, the Master has told us “that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Matt. 12:36, 37.

Not only are our words an index of what is in our hearts, but they leave their lasting impress upon the minds of others. And if the life has been given to impure thoughts and evil speaking, the judgment will take into account the long train of sin produced in other minds by these words, as well as the evil that is clinging to the one who thus lends himself to Satan as his instrument of unrighteousness.

That vulgar joke may seem funny to the carnal mind when it is uttered. But when the harvest-time comes, the judgment day revealing what that harvest really is, how will it appear then? Perhaps a little boy or girl heard your filthy words, and those words lodged in the young mind. They may have seemed to lie dormant; in fact, it may have appeared that they were forgotten—and you may have forgotten them yourself—but still they are there as seeds in that mind. By and by the youth breaks out into a blasphemer, a liar, a thief, an adulterer, a murderer. Everybody wonders why it is. They say he is “a child of a good family,” and they don’t see how it is possible for him to do such wicked and disgraceful deeds.

Ah! but this is the harvest! Who planted the seed that produced it? Possibly a father or mother who ordinarily is kind, and who in public is very careful of his words, has been sowing these seeds all imperceptibly. The careless words spoken in private which we thought amounted to nothing have been lodged in listening and innocent ears, but how ugly is the fruit in the sad time of the harvest!

Often the Sabbath-school teacher, the church deacon, or the minister, who is all decorum and precision in public, thinks it no harm to indulge privately in words of questionable import. But since only the best should be expected of such persons as these, when they indulge in vile language it cuts its way all the deeper into the mind and heart of the listener. It is reasoned, “If the Sabbath-school teacher or the deacon or the minister uses such words, they can not be very wrong.” And thus Satan works to have your private life overthrow what you do in public.

But how much better is the “word fitly spoken”! How pure and ennobling are those beautiful “apples of gold in baskets of silver”! And every one who professes the name of Christ should seek the divine power that will enable him to say, “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” Isa. 50:4. “The Lord God hath given” you this rich promise. Do you accept it? If so, then, like your Master, you will be prepared to utter the “word fitly spoken.” No soul will be wrecked by your idle speech, but instead a river of purity will flow through your mind from the angels of God, spreading the joys of righteousness and truth. T.