Friday December 6 2013

Looking Back: Good English

A brief note from December 1903 complaining about the use of slang in the pulpit.

Good English. - The organ of the greatest Presbyterian Church of the United States has recently been protesting against the slip-shod, and even vulgar, language which some ministers have been using in church. Bad as "slang" is in common conversation (and one fears that it is as prevalent here as in America), the use of such words in the pulpit is intensely more disagreeable to most people of refinement and education.

The Assembly Herald believes that the danger of preaching is not that it should die of dignity, but that it should lose its power for the lack of it. Whether or not the risk be comparatively smaller with us than in the United States, it is certainly true that the clergy of an educated church have a duty towards the splendid tongue which is their heritage.

It is little short of a crime to debase the currency. Colloquialisms, which may be half-excused in the freedom of private life, become intolerable in a prepared and studied address. The gain in vividness, if there be any, is more than counterbalanced by the shock to the hearer's refinement and the dishonour to our noble English language.

Dr. Furness makes a just plea for a pure and chastened style. "Whatever is loose or slovenly or vulgar on a printed page will jar and grate the nerves like the filing of a saw. When our nerves become thus sensitive in reading, be sure that the day of our own reformation in speaking and writing is dawning."

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