Improving Your Conversations

It was said of Thomas Halyburton, the great Scottish theologian of the late seventeenth century, that “he abhorred that unedifying converse that is spent in frequent and unseasonable jesting…so common with many, though he was abundantly facetious [humorous] in company, when and where he saw it expedient; and this way sometimes he has dropped what tended to edify. Those who conversed most with him will own, they seldom enjoyed his company without some profit by it. He oft was uneasy after much converse with other, if he was not edified himself, or thought he did not edify others.”1 So, how are your conversations benefiting those around you?

1. Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Thomas Halyburton Edinburgh: Printed for Sterling and Slade, 1821. p. xiii.