Article April 21, 1923 Issue

"Speak the word only"

MARY L. ALLEN

A big reservoir holding millions of cubic feet of water supplies a city. Hidden away in the mountains, this reservoir has been used to collect and keep for use this water for the needs of countless people. How, then, shall the water reach, at the right time and in the right way, those for whose use it is intended? Through certain rightly constructed, clean channels. Suppose a leak occurs in these. There is soon a lack of water. Unless the leak is stopped, there will be loss.

Lack! How often do we hear the words, "I have not the time to do it," or "I have not the money to do it"! But if lack cannot occur without a leak, where is the leak? Is the wrong expenditure of words one of the leaks through which can result lack of work, lack of health, time, or money,—lack of any kind, unhappily bringing loss? For, if we are using words wrongly, we may be sure there will be a breakaway somewhere. Just how, then, are we using words?

We are told by Mrs. Eddy that evil was first introduced "in the form of a talking serpent, contradicting the word of God and thereby obtaining social prestige, a large following, and changing the order and harmony of God's creation" (Christian Science versus Pantheism, p. 6). The talking serpent subtly suggested the opposite of Truth. It contradicted good. The effect was fear, inharmony, burden, lack of joy. If in the home, on the street, or in business, in our use of words we voice the opposite of fact, the opposite of the truth of being, does it make a leak through which a lack can come that would not otherwise have been? It takes only a very small leak to drain in time a mighty reservoir. It takes only one false word of evil, carelessly spoken, to commence to reverse the truth, and to weaken the clear channels of hope, faith, and love through which fullness of supply flows. Lewis Carroll, in his whimsically profound delineation of "Alice's travels," makes Humpty Dumpty say: "When I make a word do a lot of work like that, I always pay it extra. ... Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night, for to get their wages you know."

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