Satan Labels Evil Things With Pleasant Names!
There is a tendency in all language to do that...
Whether it springs from a very natural desire to hide the uglier sides of human life or whether it is the survival of some old pagan feeling that tried to propitiate the gods of nature by fair words, we cannot tell.
But every language has been rich in what grammarians call euphemisms-those nice and delicate words that cover some offensive truth.
When Prince George of Greece went over to Crete to become governor, there had been fierce rioting and bloodshed between the Muslims and Christians.
And when he arrived and was received with great enthusiasm, the correspondent of the Times gave a very curious description of the scene.
The long rows of ruined houses, beneath which in some cases, the fire is still smoldering, he wrote, are almost concealed by festoons and banners.
It was an attempt to decorate and hide the tragedies.
And language is always doing that.
No man has ever loved to call the seamier side of things by its right name or to look the darker facts of life straight in the face.
And from the first, language has been busy in fashioning its own festoons and banners to hide these ugly things.
It is this tendency of human speech that is caught up and wrested by the devil into an engine and instrument of ill. If, in the natural shuddering at death, I shrink from saying, "My mother is dead," and say instead, "She is gone," there is no harm in that.
But if by any trick of speech I veil the filthiness of sin, or if I cannot see how odious evil is because I have dubbed it with some pleasant name, I have been ignorant of his devices.
Who called the world of self and pleasure the happy world?
Who named the business man whose transactions border on the shady the smart man?
Who said that the adulterer who is breaking his wife's heart had his little weakness?
Who smiled and said the reckless was only fast?
Or called the sowing of a harvest of misery for children's children the sowing of wild oats?
Cease that speech!
Call vile things by their vile names, and be not ignorant of his devices.
~George H. Morrison
