DON'T FIRE TOO HIGH

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 16, 1875

DON'T FIRE TOO HIGH.

Speak to men in language they can understand. A few days since, a gentleman made one of a little company of spectators at a velocipede exhibition. He turned to a plain looking young man and said, “It must be very fatiguing; don’t you think so?” “I don’t know what you mean,” was his answer. He stumbled at the word fatiguing. The gentleman saw it, and said, “It must make them very tired.” “Oh, yes,” he quickly responded. Ministers should remember not to fire over people’s heads. Truth must be put in simple language, and illustrated by metaphors familiar to all. Call the sun a sun—not a luminary. Don’t call the sky “an azure vault”—call it the sky. Don’t talk of the “economy of grace,” for your plainer hearers will at once revert to the kitchen.