Words Misapplied

The worst features of vice disappear under cover of a pleasant phrase; and the man who, on any much-agitated topic, can invent a happy expression —pointed, exact, euphonious—will often achieve a victory over his opponents, and almost, it would seem, over the common intelligence of mankind.

Take an instance of the force of misapplied words from the conventional language of society. Is it likely that we should ever have heard anything about the nobleness and courage of a Roman death, if suicide had always been called, what it plainly is, a cowardly desertion of one's post, a weak-minded impatience of disappointment and adversity and pain?

Or would that miserable, and, as we trust, expiring relic of barbarism, duelling, have continued to this day, if Satan had not persuaded the abettors of this murderous sport never to speak of it but as an "affair of honour"? And thus it happens that no inconsiderable proportion of the vices which afflict society live and grow and are fostered by this trickery and devilish tact in the use of words.

See you a man who, either frequently or habitually, degrades and brutalises and unmans himself in the low indulgences of the table? Oh! the world's account of his offending is that he is one who is "fond of society."

Or see you a woman, perhaps a wife and mother, merging all the aims and responsibilities of womanhood in frivolity and show, and turning night into day? The world's smooth censure will be satisfied if you speak of her as "a fashionable person."

Or, once more, see you a young man known to be chargeable with offences of yet deeper dye—offences which have broken more hearts, ruined more homes, filled more early graves than any other in the sight of this sun? You will find parents, and reputable parents too, instead of frowning such an one from the society of their children with a righteous aversion, ready, if he be a person of wealth or position, to receive him into their houses, and even to apologise for him as a "thoughtless" young man, somewhat "gay, nobody's enemy but his own"!

Oh, let us be well assured, God's anger rests heavily on this misuse of terms! It is idle to say that we adopt this soft style of speaking—that we couch our censures in these "holiday and lady terms" — from a motive of charitableness. We all know it is no such thing. It is a sinful shrinking from calling "evil" and "darkness" by their own names; it is turning tho noble gift of language to the purpose of a miserable fraud; it is a plying of that base art which "by good words and fair speeches deceives the hearts of the simple;" it is the " turning of judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock;" it is changing "the truth of God into a lie," and making awful parody on the sacred precepts of inspiration! Oh, "woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!''— Moore