p. 187 | Evil Speaking

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 12, 1861

Evil Speaking.

Evil speaking, like smoking cigars, or like profane swearing, often becomes a habit. By habit, we mean all things that men slide into with great facility, practice readily without thinking, and get out of, if ever at all, with great difficulty. Persons who are a little selfishly inclined, fall into this habit of evil speaking with astonishing facility. What they say against their neighbor seems to them so true—certainly somebody ought to say it. If other people had as much independence as themselves, and as much abhorrence of wrong, they too would speak out against the evil things of their neighbors. So they take to themselves the honor of being special champions of virtue and censors of wrong. Each shaft hurled against a neighbor's sin is silently passed to the credit of their own virtue. The quiet assumption is that I never do or say what I condemn in my neighbor. This assumption is often the seasoning which makes evil speaking palatable, until habit shall have blunted the nicer moral sensibilities.

The temptations to evil speaking ought to be studied. In some minds it is first tolerated, then loved as giving vent to a just indignation against supposed wrong. To others it has attractions as putting their own better ways in the light of a contrast. To others of strong talking proclivities, it has the charm of an exhaustless topic; it always supplies them something to say, just as tobacco supplies certain men something to chew, and as profanity helps men to be very emphatic and very smart of speech. That becomes a temptation which agreeably meets and fills some want.

But some one will say, What's the harm? Why may we not speak the evil that is in our neighbors?

You may—sometimes, in a certain spirit, for certain ends, and in a certain way.

You may—in the spirit of true love to him—for the sake of doing him good and in the way best adapted to this end. Certainly, neither God nor reason shuts you off from any suitable efforts to correct apparent evils, and to reclaim your apparently erring friend. The Scriptures have even defined the excellent method in this case. "If thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone." That is it. You may speak of his evil to him—your heart being full of love and yearning to reclaim a straying friend. But you will observe this is quite different from a general warrant to speak evil of your neighbor behind his back, and to any and every body whose ear you can gain.

Certainly the Lord is willing you should do all the good you can, and all you can to suppress and cure existing evils. But he does not wish you to bring a curse upon your own soul by causeless and selfish evil-speaking.

And this opens the way to remark that one of the most fearful elements in the habit of evil-speaking, is its self-depriving power. It surely eats out of the soul all those kindly sentiments of well-wishing for others' good in which virtue finds its life and joy.

The man or the woman who forms the habit of evil speaking must learn to enjoy it. This point gained, they certainly cannot enjoy the good reputation and the real welfare of their fellow-being. The law of their moral progress is toward finding their own good in others' grief and trouble—building up self on the ruin they can make of others' good name.

In the end, this sin of evil speaking brings down a terrible retribution, for society must, in self defense, spue out the slanderer; and in the nature of the case his resources for happiness within himself are turned to gall. Poor man!

So let us earnestly recommend that you resist this practice before it becomes a habit. Compel your tongue, if it speaks at all, to speak well of your neighbor; it will do you good. Say all the good of each neighbor that you can find to say. It will not only make your neighborhood more pleasant, but your own soul more benevolent and more pure.—Ob. Evan.