Sound Speech by J. Clarke

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 1, 1858

Sound Speech

By J. Clarke

THAT cannot be condemned. Titus ii, 8. Let your speech be always with grace seasoned with salt. Col. iv, 6. Hold fast the form of sound words. 2 Tim. i, 13. The words of the pure are pleasant words. Prov. xv, 26. The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself. Eccl. x, 12. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words. Eccl. xii, 10. Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ. Phil. i, 27. Be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, &c. 1 Tim. iv, 12. “What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. 2 Pet. iii, 11. As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. 1 Pet. i, 15. And to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God. Ps. l, 23.

Those who are conversant with the literature of the present day, as developed in most of the political and partisan newspapers of our land, must be painfully conscious of the low state of the public taste, which can be fed with the scurrilous language, the ribald jests, and epithets, the false representations, and abuse, and slanderous assertions, which abound in these journals. Coarse, harsh, malicious, satirical and vulgar, as many of these panders to the public taste seem to be, the great evil and danger lies in the fact, that the public mind is entirely callous, and even insensible to the true state of things, and even the more moral part of community are able to relish whole pages of nonsense, and fiction, and abuse, such as would have put to the blush many a heathen.

Reared amid such influences as these, and surrounded on all sides by those whose delight it is to drink in the full draught from the cup thus filled from impure fountains, it is exceedingly difficult (for me at least) to overcome the bias thus given to the mind, and I judge from phrases and expressions that appear from time to time, that the leaven is at work in other minds as well as my own. Even the vocabulary of the saints is infected.

Here is an important point, to order our conversation aright. All rough, harsh words, all that tend to provoke, to chafe the opposer, all bitter words that rankle in the bosom, it would be Christ-like to avoid.

The more we look at this subject, taking the Bible as our standard, the more clearly do we see the evil effects of a departure from the rules laid down by Christ and the apostles in regard to this subject. I will not say that this is the greatest evil, but one of the outbreaking sins of the age, and all the more dangerous, because so common.

How very pure the language used by the Saviour. He very rarely used satire, and when he did, how very free from harshness. We who have heard the pleading of lawyers before the courts, and have become accustomed to their merciless, pitiless harangues, we who have from youth imbibed the coarse eloquence of stump speakers, have great need of divine illumination, and to be purged of all that offends a pure and holy God.

Let us by diligent study of the purest, loftiest, holiest speaker, even of the meek and lowly Jesus, learn to use sound speech which cannot be condemned. J. CLARKE.