Article December 14, 1946 Issue

"Speak out, O soul!"

DAISY CYNTHIA WOOD

When Soul speaks, through spiritual sense, the utterance is always clear, distinct, and convincing. The inward voice, the spiritual intuition, comes to us as mental impression. To give it outward expression is to define it in articulate speech or beneficent action. Animals make sounds doubtless understandable to their own kind, but the progressive refinement in the ascending scale of intelligence is the enunciated, articulated speech of the human. Then how Soul-inspired and pure should be the gift of speech! Nothing should escape one's lips that is not God-sanctioned if one's constant prayer is (Ps. 51:15), "O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise."

How attractive, winsome, beautiful, is pure speech! How definite, intelligent enunciation arrests attention and awakens the thought of the listeners! When God gives a message to the receptive thought, He provides the ability to express it in audible, understandable speech. Though one may not be thoroughly acquainted with a language, the utterance which is Love-governed and given with the motive to bless and share, will reach and uplift the heart. The most helpful way for one who is speaking to an individual, or to thousands, to show his loving consideration for them, is by knowing that God expresses His Word to all in purity, distinctness, and beauty. Volume of tone is attained without effort when thought is filled with the affluence of love reaching out to bless.

Sometimes one who is not awake to the mesmerism of habit or contagion falls into errors of speech or delivery. This can be checked by recognizing the law of Soul's perfection, and its control of every detail of our experience. Our Leader was keenly alert regarding proper verbal utterance. We have her sense of it in "We Knew Mary Baker Eddy," where she is quoted as saying (p. 79): "Speak up! When you speak so you cannot be heard, you virtually say, 'I have nothing worthy of saying.'"

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