Theocratic Aid To Kingdom Publishers

COMPOSITION

Lesson 21

GOOD SPEECH

Jehovah is the Maker or Creator of speech. He was the first one who spoke. "Though there is no beginning of God, or Jehovah, there was a beginning of speech or word ; and it was God who began or produced speech or word."  —Page 45 of "The Truth Shall Make You Free".

All that God does is good; therefore, his speech is good speech, correct speech. Speech, or language, is the means of communication between persons. Speech is a gift from God. The man Adam, when created by God, was given the ability to speak. Not only was he given the ability to express his thoughts in speech, but he was given the ability to understand speech, because God spoke to Adam and God gave Adam instructions as to what to do. This was communicated by speech which Adam heard and understood. The speech that God gave to Adam was good, because all God's works are good and perfect; but Adam failed, and his speech became imperfect.

At the tower of Babel God confused man's speech into many languages or dialects, and, as a result, today there

are myriads of speeches or languages of men, some of them spoken by merely a few and others by millions. Some two hundred million speak English. And all the speakers of English, as well as of any other language, are imperfect creatures. Therefore, what they say is not perfect.

Being spread out over all the earth, the English language is more prone to change. English is spoken in a different way by different peoples in one little town. If a person is better educated he speaks one way. If a person has no education at all, has no opportunity to read, or cannot read, does not have time for much conversation and works hard all day long, he has no opportunity to improve his speech. He has difficulty in expressing himself and cannot always say what he has in mind. Therefore his means of communication is very deficient. He cannot always communicate to his hearers just what he has in mind. Another person does much reading and remembers many words. He has the ability to hear a group of sounds and to reproduce them, but he does not know exactly what that group of sounds means. Torrents of words come out of his mouth, but they do not express accurate thought either; that torrent of words is not correct or good speech.

The minister of God does not want to be like either of these persons. He wants to use correct or good speech for the purpose of clearly expressing the good message that the Creator of speech has entrusted him to communicate to others. To do it properly he must use good or correct speech. But what is good or correct speech? How may the minister of God know what is correct and what is not correct, what does convey thought clearly? That is very important to the minister.

Certain men during the past four hundred years have investigated the English language and heard how people express themselves clearly, people who have had the opportunity of watching their speech and improving it, that they might express their thoughts clearly. These investigators have analyzed the different means or methods of ex-

pressing thoughts accurately, and they have explained this manner in which good speakers actually express themselves. They have discovered the principle which they use, and this explanation of what speech does is called grammar. This is all it is. Many have the wrong idea that several men get together and arbitrarily make rules to be followed by the rest. It is not the rules that govern speech. It is speech that governs the rules. It is the way good speakers speak that governs rules, because the rules are merely the expression of observed facts of good usage. This is all grammar is. The name "grammar" is drawn from the Greek word gramma, which means "that which is written".

For example: By analyzing what man says one sees that certain words express action or state or happening or occurrence, and because that class of words was considered by the Latins the most important of all, they just called it "the word", or verbum, from which comes the English word verb.

In the minister's vocabulary the most important of all words is Jehovah. And in the book "The Kingdom Is at Hand", page 96, this sentence appears: "The name Jehovah literally means 'He causes to be'." The word Jehovah in Hebrew is really a verb, but it is not used as a verb.

That brings one to a very interesting principle in English, that is, that words are classified according to their use in a sentence and not according to the very form of the words themselves. For example: If one says, "He causes to be," one can readily see that the words "causes to be"' are verbs because of their meaning in that sentence. But if one should say, "Jehovah is God," one knows that the word Jehovah as used in that sentence is not a verb because it is not used in that sense. Thus one learns upon analyzing good speech that words may be classified in different groups according to their use. There are eight of these groupings, and they are called "parts of speech". All the words in the English language, in their varied uses, fall

within one or more of these eight classifications. But that will be taken up in subsequent lessons.