Wrong Use of Words

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 10.

Wrong Use of Words.

THE word “reckon” is a good biblical term, whose meaning has been sadly perverted in our popular speech. Southerners say “reckon” where a Yankee would say “guess,” and one of these expressions is commonly about as correct as the other; that is, not correct at all. To “reckon” is not to suppose, nor to think, nor to imagine, nor to believe. It is a more exact and specific word than any one of these. When a man “reckons” he does about the solidest and most exact thing that the human mind is capable of doing. When Paul says that he reckons that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us, he is not guessing, nor supposing, nor imagining, nor even believing. The word reckon is a mathematical term. It means to count. It is properly applied to the act of footing up a column of figures and setting down the “answer” as the school-boys call it.

The English inn-keeper, when you are about to leave his house, hands you your “reckoning.” It is a piece of paper containing an account of all the items with which you have been supplied during your stay; and the price of each “item” is set down and the total footed up.

There was nothing indefinite about Paul’s “reckoning.” It was a case of straightforward counting. The “items” were in his own personal experience. He had experienced the sufferings of this present time as few human beings have ever done. He knew what they were. They were no guess-work.

And then he had been caught up to the third heaven and had revelations of the divine glory too grand for human utterance. And thus he was in a condition to “reckon.” He had the facts before him. Suppositions were not indulged. “Unproved hypotheses” had no place. Speculations were nowhere. He did not “pass beyond the boundary of the experimental evidence,” in order to “discern” anything. He simply footed up the column—worked the “sum”—and calmly stated the answer. It is as solid as arithmetic, as certain as the multiplication table, as safe as the “rule of three.”

To a skeptic, like John Stuart Mill, the glorious future of the Christian was of the nature of an unverified hypothesis, or baseless fancy. To a Christian like Paul, that future was a solid answer to an arithmetical problem—a sure and safe “reckoning.”—Biblical Recorder.