A TIME FOR ALL THINGS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 5, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 30.

A TIME FOR ALL THINGS.

TIMELINESS is as important as fitness. The right thing may become wrong unless it is in the right time. Look well to the time of doing anything; there is a time for all things. Choose the right time for saying things. If your wife looks wearied and worn out, be sure it is not the right time to tell her that the dinner is not hot, or that the bread is sour. Comfort her—cheer her up.

If you are annoyed or vexed at people, just remember it is not the right time to speak. Close your mouth—shut your teeth together firmly, and it will save you many a useless and unavailing regret, and many a bitter enemy.

If you happen to feel a little cross—and who among us does not at some time or other?—do not select that season for reproving your noisy household flock. One word spoken in passion will make a scar that a summer of smiles can hardly heal over.

If you are a wife, never tease your husband when he comes home, weary, from his day's business. It is not the right time. Do not ask him for expensive outlays when he has been talking about hard times—it is, most assuredly, the wrong time.

If he has entered upon an undertaking against your advice, do not seize on the moment of its failure to say, "I told you so!" In fact, it is never the right time for those four monosyllables.

Oh, if people only knew enough to discriminate between the right time and the wrong, there would be less domestic unhappiness, less silent sorrow, and less estrangement of heart. The greatest calamities that overshadow our lives have sometimes their germ in matters as apparently slight as this. If you would only pause, reader, before the stinging taunt, or the biting sneer, or the unkind scoff passes your lips—pause just long enough to ask yourself, "Is it the right time for me to speak?" you would shut the door against many a heartache.

The world hinges on little things, and there are many more trivial than the right time and the wrong.—Selected.