Certainly we will try; and while we concern ourselves with the definition, be good enough to busy yourself solely with its application-not to the community, not to some individual whom you happen to know, but to one whom you happen not to know very well-yourself.

To say anything against anybody, without a good reason for saying it, is evil speaking. To speak of one's natural or moral deformity-of his faults or misfortunes or to ascribe to any one these things; to say or to intimate, by word or look or tone, what would wound his feelings if he were present, or may lower the respect or regard in which he is held; to make a statement, or utter a 'report,' or breathe a sentiment or opinion, that tends to tarnish his good name, or weaken his influence; to do thus without a good reason for so doing, a benevolent or christian motive for it, is evil speaking.

This definition covers a great deal, and so it should; for the "commandment" of God is "exceeding broad." In saying that what is so common and so little condemned is nevertheless the sin of evil speaking, we appeal to no authority but the "golden rule." Our assertion hangs upon the royal law of love; they stand or fall together-and they may be perverted or lost sight of together.

Our position needs no attempt at justification-for it commends itself to every conscience; but we cannot forbear calling your thoughts, reader, to one simple view of it that is apt to be overlooked. The rule of right requires that all human beings regard one another as of one family, and such is the spirit of the gospel. You ought to be—you are not it is true, but you ought to be as careful of the honor, standing, or repute, of every individual, as you are in regard to your own brother or sister when you speak of him or of her among strangers. Such is pre-eminently the obligation of those who have entered into a religious fellowship; yet it is an obligation resting upon the whole human family. Now in all that you say to mere acquaintances respecting your near relatives, you surely do acknowledge no standard lower than that which we have now pointed out; and as you must acknowledge one and the same rule for the regulation of your conversation respecting all men, you will admit that this standard, as it has now been appealed to, is not too lofty nor severe.

Let us notice this definition a little more particularly.

To say anything against anybody, without a good reason for saying it, is evil speaking. Let us remind your here of what was said substantially in our last article. Your statement may be a lie or a falsehood or a truth, and still if it be against anybody, and you have no good and sufficient reason for it, you are guilty of this sin. The sentiment or opinion you express may be sincere and sound and just; still your expression of it may be this sin. It is true that your lying must be always worse than your telling the truth; but where it is your duty to hold your peace, your telling the truth is a sin to be confessed and repented of and abandoned. When an individual becomes the subject of a conversation in which you are engaged, you may pursue three different courses in regard to him; you may speak in his favor, or speak nothing of him, or speak against him. If you cannot conscientiously adopt the first, this is no reason why you should adopt the last. If you have no good and sufficient reason for adopting the last, your duty before high heaven is to say nothing about the individual in question; and whatever you do say against him is evil speaking-though it be as true as the Bible, though you

say it from "the best authority," and though you employ very courteous or guarded phraseology.

"Any thing against"-one would think this a very plain as well as comprehensive expression; and it is plain enough to be sure, except to an individual who happens to be engaged in evil speaking. Suppose that he is setting forth at large the indiscretion of an absent acquaintance, and you suggest to him the impropriety of such discourse. It is most likely he will answer, "I am saying nothing against that man-he means well I doubt notbut I say he is indiscreet." Now so soon as he shall have time to forget his own answer, tell him that a certain person made the same remarks about himself, and listen to him while he charges that person with a spirit of opposition, a readiness to depreciate him, a disposition to hurt his influence; for he has no doubt now that to charge one seriously with indiscretion is to speak against him; he acknowledges the design and use of the weapon so soon as he feels its point. Not only that which imputes peculiar criminality to a man is against him, and is thus in a common use of the word, evil; but whatever takes from our respect for him, or our complacency in him, is against him. The evil spoken of respecting him may be moral-that is it may be sin, and this certainly is always of most consequence; or it may be naturalthat is, it may be misfortune, and this is of consequence enough. His fault is surely something against him; so is his foible. Thus if you charge a lady with lying, without a good motive for making the charge, whether it be true or not, you speak evil of her; this must be agreed on all hands; but if you charge her with vanity, as a weakness, this too is speaking against her, or speaking evil of her; and if you charge her with the misfortune of having naturally a weak understanding, you are guilty of the same sin. In these instances you are guilty of evil speaking whether what you say is as true as the Bible, or as false as the Koran, because, without a sufficient reason, without a benevolent motive, you are saying of a fellow creature, of a sister in the great family of mankind, what is calculated at the best in some degree to lower her standing, to diminish the respect she might otherwise obtain, or to impair her influence. When you talk too against her domestic management, blush for your own most unmanageable tongue-repent rather. We cannot forbear adding to these instances another-a queer one you will say -yet not in kind uncommon. When you insinuate without a benevolent motive that a certain lady's shoulder is deformed though her dress hides it very cleverly, remember that though you ascribe to her only a natural deformity which is no sin, you are indulging in evil speaking, and this is a moral deformity—a sin.

But notice another feature in our definition. The sin of evil speaking is saying anything against anybody without a good reason for saying it. There occurs here a distinction of this kind; it is not enough that you have a good reason for what you say, but a good reason also for your saying it. If a bit of paper were blown to your feet and you read upon it the assertion, “A. B. is a man of no principle," you might demand no better reason for the assertion than its simple truth; but if you speak thus of A. B. your conscience requires of you a good motive for telling such a truth-a good and sufficient reason not only why the assertion may be believed if made, but why you should make it.

What then constitutes a good reason for saying anything against anybody? What may shelter it from the charge of evil speaking?

This question has in fact been answered already in the use of these phrases; "a good and sufficient reason"—“ a good motive"-" a benevolent motive." Benevolence may be said to require whatever it allows, where the happiness of our fellow men is involved; and it may be confidently asserted that unless it be necessary in self-defence, you have no right to say what is true against any individual, if benevolence does not require it at your hands. Your only good motive, your only sufficient reason, must be good will either to the person of whom, or the person to whom, you say it. Suppose a case. You see a friend or acquaintance entering into pecuniary dealings with a man whom you know to be a villain, cheat, and swindler. Go to your friend, and say, "That man is a worthless fellow ;" and your are doing your duty; for good will to the person endangered not only allows but dictates such a To do so is not the sin of evil speaking. Suppose another case. The same villain comes into an unsuspecting community, holding up pretences that he may use them mischievously, borrowing money that he may squander it, winning confidence that he may abuse it. Tell every man you meet, all that you know against the masked destroyer-for telling it is not evil speaking, but the wholesome instruction which the community needs and which a regard for the public good requires of you and of every deserving citizen. Your good will here seeks the public good, while in the last case it sought an individual's good. But suppose another case.

course.

If A. is ill-tempered and B. is intemperate, beware how you tell either what you know of the other; but speak against A. to his face, and tell him how irritable he is in order that you may correct his irritability; speak against B. to his face, and tell him what a drunkard he is in order that you may correct his drunkenness. Here you speak to an individual against himself, for his good; and how can you act for a better reason? Nobody ever called this evil speaking.

These three cases may be found to illustrate nearly all. There is really however no need of illustration to enable us to see clearly on any occasion whether good will to the person ill spoken of, or to others, is or is not the possible and actual motive or reason for what is said. It is perhaps of more importance that we notice certain common inducements under which people are wont to defame one another, which are so far from constituting good and sufficient reasons, that they involve the criminality of all evil speaking, being the deep and living roots of Slander, Censoriousness, Defamation. Observe for yourself three or four-mark their commonness, and their emptiness or rather wickedness; and you can lengthen the list at your leisure.

It is no justification, for your saying anything against anybody, that you do not seek his injury; for most probably the reason is not a true one, and if true is surely insufficient. Because you have not the worst possible motive, is your actual motive therefore good and sufficient?

It is no justification, that you do it to gratify yourself; for such self-gratification is essentially wrong and abominable; it is nothing less than feeding misanthropy, malevolence, envy, jealousy, or irritated pride.

It is no justification, that you do it to gratify the individuals with whom you are conversing; for this is feeding these same hellish passions in their

bosoms, as well as in your own; and you might as well serve the Prince of Evil in any other way in order to please his Satanic majesty.

It is no justification, that you do it because you have nothing else to say; for if that is the case say nothing at all, and if it be hard to hold the unruly member still, and evil speeches "come crowding up for utterance," rather than let go be content to burst.

Remember, that you have no right ever to say or intimate anything against anybody except in necessary self-defence, or for his good, or for the good of the individual to whom you say it.

Now let it be considered what an amount of guilt rests upon every community, every church, every family, before that God, whose own word condemns, and whose wrath kindles upon, evil speakers and evil speaking! Never was a mere man innocent in this matter. Moral and worthy and amiable persons-professors of religion-ministers of the gospel-all are so guilty here that it would seem the Holy Dove must have already taken his flight from earth offended, or may soon take it grieved, because none will ‘let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from' them, with all malice.'

But let it be ever considered too, that while all are guilty, in a degree, of evil speaking, though all cannot be called evil speakers, it is the part of every individual to consider his own case; and, patient reader, if you will take a due care of yourself, and guard the door of your heart's 'abundance,' the more in consequence of these hints, you may thank God that you ever took the Microcosm.

Two lessons more-then a parting word—and our school is 'dismissed.' Be content often to have no opinion about the characters, habits, and conditions, of other people; or if you must have one be content often to keep it to yourself. There is a question fashionable at all times and places whenever an individual is mentioned, which a reflecting man must allow to be a disastrous question, inasmuch as it is likely to be answered. "What do you think of him?” "How do you like her?" The question is ordinarily bad enough; the answer is ordinarily worse. Suppose you make it a rule, when you cannot answer it favorably to the person thus introduced, to say, "I have no particular thoughts on the subject," or, "He has not asked me yet for my opinion." You may thus, and in no other way, without entire silence, save yourself from a vast deal of evil speaking.

The second lesson is this; if the vice in question is to be successfully struck at, and especially if it is to be extirpated, it must be done chiefly in the young, and it becomes all parents to be sure that it is not bred in their own families by their carelessness or their examples. It is not difficult to find whole families in which the spirit of detraction is a family trait. The domestic circle is infected and defiled throughout, so that it may remind one not improperly of a nest of vultures, where the young ones are trained to find a delicious repast in the faults and foibles and misfortunes which they greedily gather from the neighborhoods that Providence mysteriously allows them to infest. Mangled reputations, chilled respect, tainted affections, wounded spirits made to fester! these are the trophies and the fruits won by such domestic life and conversation; and such a family obtains, for its own secret bosom, its appropriate reward—even wormwood and gall.

Now if we could find an orator who would dare thus to address them, we

would ask him to assemble all the readers of the Microcosm, all the people of this city, all christian churches, and all christian families; and to say to them something like this, and as much more as they would bear. “O intelligent and worthy ones, be fair enough to talk about others as you would have them talk about you. Professors of religion, be religious enough to love one another, and love one another enough to bridle your tongues. You who have time and opportunity and inclination for saying a great deal, say nothing against anybody unless you are convinced it is your duty to say it. You public-spirited ladies, upon whom cometh the care of all the ministers, to say nothing of all the churches, be more merciful-that is less talkative— where you can say nothing in behalf of your victim. Know ye all that gossip and tattle and reports and scandal, are poor nourishment for a soul, nay, are rank poison. Dare not spend one moment, one breath, in this abominable work of evil speaking, lest you hear a voice saying to you out of heaven, Hold your peace!"

0.

For the Microcosm.

""TIS FOR HOME."

STRUGGLER with ocean's foam,

Wherefore upon the wild and stormy deep,
Where the wind spirits their rude pastimes keep,
Dost thou all lonely roam ?

The sailor's eye gleam'd 'neath its lash damp with foam,—
"Tis for those whom I love in my own calm home.

Wand'rer on foreign strand,

Why art thou there, scathed by the hot Simoon,
Fainting with chill of night and glare of noon,
Far from thy fatherland?

The step of the wand'rer grew light on the sand-
"Tis for lov'd ones of home in my own green land.

Warrior in battle hour,

Whence is thy kindling eye-thy lip of pride--
Thy stately tread-when death roams wide
In his withering power?

A swift flush softened that stern dark brow-
'Tis for home, my free home, I am warring now.

Haunter of learning's cell,

Pale, wasting by thy taper's sickly light

Thy life's fresh hues-whence is thy spirit's might
In long deep thought to dwell?

The gifted one turned from his ancient tome-
"Tis for those whom I love in my own glad home.

IONE.