Kitty, do you always mean what you say?”
“Yes, Grace, I think so; at least I try to be quite sincere. But of course words come to our lips so quickly that it is difficult to think about every one of them. But I really strive to be careful as far as can. Why do you ask?”
“I ask, because I want to know whether other people find it as hard as I do to be thoroughly truthful. I believe that to speak the truth, and only the truth, is the very hardest thing in all the world.”
“I almost think it is, I am often tempted to color things a little when I am relating a fact that has happened. It seems rather dull and uninteresting if one tells it exactly as it happened.”
“Then it is better not to tell it at all Kitty.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“And yet I am not sure that the truth is really dull and uninteresting. It does not need any of our exaggeration. But we are apt to use words stronger than are really necessary.”
“Yes, we are; only this morning I told mamma that it poured, but really it only rained rather fast. I have seen rain come down much more heavily than it did then.”
“That is what I mean. It is so easy to say what is nearly but not quite true.”
“And yet I think it is very had and disgraceful to allow ourselves to be untrue.”
“Yes, I feel that it is, Kitty. I wish we could be perfectly true.”
“I think we may, if we pray earnestly, and watch ourselves. But, Grace, I will tell you one way in which I am afraid we are often untrue, and that is in hymn-singing.”
“How can that be?”
“I will tell you what I did this morning. I sang several hymns over, because I like them so much, and the tunes are so pretty. Old Mrs. Clarke heard me sing—
Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest;”
and Mrs. Clarke asked me if I really meant it. I was so surprised that I scarcely knew what to say. But she waited for an answer, so I told her that I had not thought of it before.
‘Had you not, my child?’ she said very gravely. ‘I hope you are not mocking Jesus by telling Him that His name is sweet to you, when you care neither for Him nor His name.’ It made me feel. quite miserable, Grace.”
“I should think it would, too. I have never thought of it before, but of course it is a dreadful thing to sing words to Jesus that, we do not mean. It is like telling lies to Him, and yet I am afraid I have often done it.”
“What can we do, Grace?”
“I do not know. I should not like to leave off singing hymns.”
“Neither should I, because I enjoy them so much. I wish—”
“What do you wish, ‘Kitty?”
“‘That we could mean the hymns as well as sing them.”
“So do I, Kitty. I suppose we are not too young to love Jesus, and if we loved Him we could sing all our hymns quite sincerely. I have often wished I were a Christian.”
“So have I, but I do not know the way to become one.”
The two girls forgot Christ’s own words:
The next day was Sunday. They both thought of what they had said when the hymns were given out.
ML 07/16/1939