A thorough knowledge of the essentials of education should be not only the condition of admission to a higher course, but the constant test for continuance and advancement. [Sidenote: _Language_] And in every branch of education there are objects to be gained more important than those secured by mere technical knowledge. Take language, for example. More important than the acquirement of foreign languages, living or dead, is the ability to write and speak one’s mother-tongue with ease and accuracy; but no training gained through a knowledge of grammatical rules can compare in importance with the study of language from a higher point of view. With this study, to a great degree, is bound up life’s weal or woe. [Sidenote: _The Chief Requisite_] The chief requisite of language is that it be pure and kind and true,—“the outward expression of an inward grace.” God says: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”[342] And if such are the thoughts, such will be the expression. [Sidenote: _Habits of Speech_] The best school for this language-study is the home; but since the work of the home is so often neglected, it devolves on the teacher to aid his pupils in forming right habits of speech. The teacher can do much to discourage that evil habit, the curse of the community, the neighborhood, and the home,—the habit of backbiting, gossip, ungenerous criticism. In this no pains should be spared. Impress upon the students the fact that this habit reveals a lack of culture and refinement and of true goodness of heart; it unfits one both for the society of the truly cultured and refined in this world and for association with the holy ones of heaven. [Sidenote: _Gossip; Cannibalism_] We think with horror of the cannibal who feasts on the still warm and trembling flesh of his victim; but are the results of even this practise more terrible than are the agony and ruin caused by misrepresenting motive, blackening reputation, dissecting character? Let the children, and the youth as well, learn what God says about these things:— “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”[343] In Scripture, backbiters are classed with “haters of God,” with “inventors of evil things,” with those who are “without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful,” “full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity.” It is “the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death.”[344] He whom God accounts a citizen of Zion is he that “speaketh the truth in his heart;” “that backbiteth not with his tongue,” “nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.”[345] [Sidenote: _Expletive, Exaggeration_]