The
Power of the Tongue
by Octavius Winslow
Death and life are in the power of the tongue—Proverbs 18:21
It is a painful and humiliating thought, that a faculty so noble as speech,
a gift so useful as language, should ever be so ignobly employed and basely
misused as it often is. God has not endowed us with a faculty or furnished
us with an engine more fruitful of good or of evil, than this. Of the
power of the tongue for evil, how strong is the language of the Apostle
James, “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue
among our members, that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the
course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.” These are words
terribly significant!
Not less strong is the language of God’s Word, touching the power
of the tongue for good—“The tongue of the just is as chosen
silver.” “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.” “Heaviness
in the heart of man makes it stoop: but a cheerful word makes it glad.”
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should
know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.”
Thus, what a marvellous instrument of power is human language! As the
vehicle of thought, as the channel of love, and as the instrument of communion
it transcends all others. The tongue of the intelligent instructs us;
the tongue of the holy sanctifies us; the tongue of the sympathizing soothes
us; the tongue of the faithful admonishes us; the tongue of the loving
and the kind is as marrow to the bones; and, transcending all, the tongue
that discourses to us of Jesus is as life to the soul. Marvellous instrument!
possessing a power so great! Capable of producing such great misery or
such intense happiness; of being a curse so bitter or a blessing so sweet.
“Out of the same mouth,” is the language of James, “proceeds
both blessing and cursing.”
Before proceeding further with our meditation, let me endeavor to impress
you with a solemn conviction of its great practical importance. It is
not an idle or speculative subject which now asks your consideration.
It is more closely connected with our individual sanctification and with
the solemn transaction of the final judgment than, perhaps, many of my
readers may have thought. If, as the Apostle James says, “the tongue
is a world of iniquity,” and if, as the Lord Jesus has forewarned
us—“By your words shall you be justified, and by your words
you shall be condemned”—then, it takes its place by the side
of the most vital and serious subjects that can engage our study. I speak
the words of truth and soberness when I remark, that most of the evils
which shade the luster of domestic happiness, empoison the springs of
social communion, sending their baneful influence along all the channels
of society—and most of the strifes and dissensions which mar the
harmony and impair the holiness of Christians, may be traced to unguardedness
of speech—to an unbridled, unhallowed use of the tongue.
Since speech, as I have remarked, is one of those noble faculties by which
man is distinguished from the irrational creation, the thought should
never be absent from our minds that, on its proper or perverted use hangs
much of the good, or much of the evil, that affects human society. As
heirs of eternity, nothing that we utter can be deemed trifling or insignificant.
If our thoughts are indestructible, equally so are the words which clothe
them. The air itself is a vast whispering gallery, along which travel,
as upon its undulating waves, the thoughts we conceive and the words we
utter, onward to the distant shores of the eternity to which they speed;
where, though now scarcely noted or soon forgotten, they will meet us
again—rising up as witnesses against us at the great day of judgment,
if not cleansed and sanctified by the blood of the Lamb. Such is the solemn
subject which is about to engage our study. May the Holy Spirit guide
and sanctify our present meditations! May the tongue which is about to
speak be touched as with living fire.
In the first place, we are told that, “death is in the power of the
tongue.” This, taking a general and comprehensive view of the subject,
will apply to all species of evil speaking. The evil tongue is a polyglot;
that is, it speaks as in many languages: its name is legion. Let me specify
a few of those particular forms which come under the general head of evil
speaking.
First, there is the tongue of the talebearer—the officious propagator
of idle gossip: a numerous body, alas! is this—greater pests to society
do not exist within its bosom. What lengths will not the talebearer travel,
what pains will he not take, what time will he not expend in circulating
an injurious report, in dispersing a dark assumption! It was, perhaps,
at first but a conjecture, a rumor, a hearsay; nevertheless, this voracious
devourer of evil, this ruthless utterer of base coin, has caught it—and
it now becomes his self-imposed and dreary mission to travel from one
end of the town to the other, in one day giving circulation and fixedness
to a slander, the sad effects of which years may not entirely obliterate.
I ask, is there not death in the power of the tongue of an idle, unscrupulous
talebearer?
But what does the Word of God say concerning such? There is, first, God’s
positive command, forbidding the crime—“You shall not go up
and down as a TALEBEARER among the people.” What does Solomon observe?
“A TALEBEARER reveals secrets.” “What dainty morsels rumors
are—but they sink deep into one’s heart.” “ Where
no wood is, the fire goes out; so, where there is no TALEBEARER [whisperer],
the strife ceases.” “He that utters a SLANDER is a fool.”
And what says the holy and indignant Psalmist? “Whoever privily SLANDERS
his neighbor, him will I cut off.”
Such is the solemn light in which the Scriptures of truth place this form
of evil speaking. There is death in it—death to domestic happiness
and individual reputation. Shun the talebearer as you would the touch
of a glove infected with the plague; set your face as a flint against
him; let him see by your look that his presence is as distasteful as his
mission is abhorrent. “The north wind drives away rain: so does an
angry countenance a BACKBITING tongue.”
You, idle gossiper! traveling from house to house, retailing your unholy
wares, trafficking in character, reputation, and happiness; you violator
of confidence! unveiling domestic life, within whose sacred precincts
unguarded friendship admitted you; you keen anatomist! visiting abodes
for no other purpose than to dissect the character, or the doings, or
the sayings of each family or neighbor—while your own dreads most
of all the knife and the probe—what are you but a moral epidemic,
that walks in darkness, spreading around you desolation and death; over
whom, angels might weep and demons do shout, and whom every pious and
well-regulated mind shuns, as it shuns the sting of a scorpion or a breath
of the plague!
Such, too, is the tongue of slander. The slanderer is not merely the idle
gossip, he is more. He is the inventor, or, what is equally criminal,
he is the propagator of calumny itself! Envious of a rival, resolved upon
shading the luster, or bent upon the total extinguishment of a star circling
in a wider and brighter orbit than his own, he either coins, or propagates
a lie injurious to the character of some public servant of God, or the
reputation and happiness of some private individual moving in the quiet
and unobtrusive walks of usefulness.
Is there not death in this unhallowed use of the tongue? Is there not
‘slaying power’ in that false report, that base insinuation,
that cruel surmise, that “Soft buzzing slander, that eats an honest
name”? Most assuredly! The treacherous moth is not a more insidious
and dangerous foe to the beautiful fabric it secretly and slowly destroys;
nor the worm a more searching and wasting enemy of the costly vellum whose
heart it pierces and devours, than he whose tongue is sharper than a sword,
“Cutting honest throats by whispers.”
It has been remarked that against slander there is no effectual armor
of defense. Nothing is easier than to invent a slander, and nothing more
difficult than to annihilate it. It generally selects for its victims
the most good and worthy, as the birds peck at and destroy the best and
loveliest fruit. I do not think that Tophet boasts of a darker fiend,
or man can deplore a fouler foe than he who deals in it. Like the Indian,
it dips its arrows in deadly poison; like Judas, it betrays the innocent
with the kiss of villainy. Assassination is its employment, the guiltless
its victims, ruin its sport, and the loud laugh of hell its reward! It
is a moral pestilence veiled in darkness; a thousand fall beside it and
ten thousand at its right hand, so unmercifully and deeply wounded as
often never to recover the anguish of heart it has occasioned. This demon
spirit of slander is thus graphically portrayed by a Christian poet:
“The man in whom this spirit entered was undone;
His tongue was set on fire of hell; his heart
Was black as death; his legs were faint with haste
To propagate the lie his soul had framed;
His pillow was the peace of families
Destroyed, the sigh of innocence reproached,
Broken friendship, and the strife of brotherhood.
Yet did he spare his sleep, and hear the clock
Number the midnight watches over his bed
Devising mischief more; and early rose
And made most hellish meals of good men’s names.”
To these must be added the backbiter—the destroyer of the absent
one. Of all evil speaking this is, perhaps, the lowest, the most cruel
and dastardly. Taking advantage of the defenseless position of his victim,
asserting behind his back what he would not dare to utter before his face—by
dark insinuations, by mysterious innuendoes, by a tragic tone—or,
as Hannah Moore expresses it, “by a significant shrug of the shoulder,”—the
backbiter will give affected importance and authenticity to what all the
while he knows to be unfounded in truth; and by this despicable means
do serious and, perhaps, irreparable injury to the character and good
name of an innocent, and, it may be, useful servant of the Lord; who,
by his absence, is precluded from either defending his innocence or confounding
his calumniator.
How pointed and pungent are the Divine denunciations of all such, ”Lord,
who shall abide in Your tabernacle? who shall dwell in Your holy hill?
He that walks uprightly and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his
heart. He that does not BACKBITE with his tongue, nor does evil to his
neighbors, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor.” If such
only have a place in God’s tabernacle, if only such dwell upon His
holy hill, if the slanderer and the backbiter are excluded thence—alas!
how great will be the number thus excluded! How sad and unenviable, then,
the character of the evil-speaker, the slanderer, the whisperer, the backbiter,
the talebearer, the gossip! What are all these but domestic pests—propagators
of a social moral plague? “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with
their tongue they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their
lips.”
Under this head we must class the anonymous disseminator of evil. The
pen is a powerful auxiliary of the tongue, and gives permanence to its
words, as the press gives to them wings. The anonymous propagator of evil
must be classed among the most dangerous, as the most infamous vipers
of the community: he is a concealed assassin. An individual may imagine
that he sees just reasons for personal concealment in the act of doing
a good service; but, even viewed in this point of light, the morality
of anonymous communications is at best but dubious. What is it but wearing
the assassin’s cowl—assuming the murderer’s mask? It is
the adoption of a mode of doing us a supposed good by a friend, which
public sentiment looks upon and condemns as only befitting the secret
and sworn foe.
If you wish to warn an individual of a danger, or to apprise him of any
evil, or to tell him of a fault, three courses are open to you. Either
go to him yourself, and tell him; or, write to him, with your signature;
or, enlist the office of a mutual friend. If neither of these modes commend
themselves to your judgment and feelings, then it is plainly your duty
to do nothing. If you are not willing to help save an individual, when
in your power, at the expense of a little personal feeling, then your
friendliness is not sufficient to entitle you to meddle in any way with
his affairs. An individual’s name is a guarantee of his honorable
and truthful procedure: his name on paper represents himself. Acting thus
openly and avowedly, he is invested by a safeguard which silently yet
effectually restrains him from many temptations which would sorely assail
him if he were consciously unknown. He is, perhaps, restrained from taking
a false step, or from committing himself to a dishonorable action, or
from doing an unwise thing injurious to himself or another, from a consideration
of the compromise in which it would inevitably involve the integrity of
his character and the honor of his name.
But what shall we say of the concealed foe?—the man who writes unfavorably
of a third party; who seeks to separate very friends, to sow the seeds
of discord in families, to make mischief in neighborhoods and in churches
by anonymous communications, whether true or false? What can we say of
him who, under cover of darkness, thus seeks to stab another’s feelings,
or reputation, or hopes, but that, in the strong language of God’s
Word, he is a “child of the devil,” doing his work with his
father’s zeal and fidelity.
Less than this we dare not say of the individual who has the ineffable
lowliness to write and propagate slanderous reports and false statements
of a fellow creature, while seeking to escape all responsibility of the
cowardly act by concealing his name. It is a species of moral assassination
of the deepest dye, branding the murderer as an outlaw of society; and
every good and honest man will so denounce it.
From the power of all such our only true deliverance is prayer. And whose
words so suitable as David’s?—“Deliver me, O Lord from
the evil man; preserve me from the violent men which imagine mischief
in their hearts; continually are they gathered together for war. They
have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under
their lips. Let not an evil speaker be established in the earth: evil
shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him.”
There is also death in the tongue of the flatterer. Not less pointed and
scarcely less severe is the portrait which God presents of the character
of the flatterer. Thus is he spoken of—“He that goes about as
a talebearer reveals secrets; therefore meddle not with him that FLATTERS
with his lips.” “A man that FLATTERS his neighbor spreads a
net for his feet.” “They speak vainly, every one with his neighbor;
with FLATTERING LIPS and with a double heart do they speak. The Lord shall
cut of all FLATTERING lips, and the tongue that speaks proud things.”
Such is God’s estimate of this character.
There are few evils of the tongue apparently more innocent and harmless,
and yet, in reality, more sinful and dangerous than this. The flatterer
places the victim of his eulogy in a false position; he invests him with
an untrue, ideal estimate of himself. Against this species of praise few
are invulnerable: it is natural for men to love adulation! Self-flattery
is the idol of the human heart, and before the shrine of this, their favorite
god, men delight that others should worship. However conscious they may
be of not possessing the qualities commended, and even penetrating enough
to discern the hollowness and insincerity of the adulation, still, the
incense is so fragrant and self-satisfying that, while it is felt to be
too exaggerated to be true, it yet is too courtly not to please.
How few possess that humility of mind and refinement of feeling that fortifies
against its baneful influence! To some delicately formed minds nothing
is more painful and offensive than to be covered with the incense of creature-adulation.
And yet, offered to whom and however delicately, in all flattery there
is death! Even the most high-minded and refined are not entirely armored
against its injurious effects.
Man is a fallen being; and to speak to him of his virtues as many, of
his infirmities as few, and of his offences as venial, is to ignore his
state as a sinner, to soften and refine away the corruptness of his depraved
nature, and to come between him and Christ. It is to cajole him in his
self-righteousness, to foster the delusion that he is “rich and increased
in goods, and has need of nothing,” blinding him to the solemn fact
that he is “Wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”
Surely there is death in the tongue of the flatterer!
Not less dangerous and equally reprehensible is religious flattery—flattery
as addressed to our fellow Christians. How conspicuous is this spot upon
the Christian profession of many! Is there not a strong habit in us of
speaking approvingly and applaudingly of each other’s piety? to commend
the spirituality, religious knowledge, and ripeness of Christian experience?
And yet how unconscious we may be of the treacherous snare we lay for
the feet of a Christian brother or sister, and in so doing, lay for our
own! What almost irreparable injury we are doing to his personal piety!
To eulogize his gifts, to commend his graces, to extol his experience,
to applaud his achievements and his usefulness, is to mar and impair that
lowliness of spirit and abnegation of self with which a Christian man
should ever walk before the Lord and before his fellows. The corruption
even of a saint of God is still so deep, and his sanctification so imperfect—the
old Adam still so strong and the new man so feeble—that, the most
gracious are not entirely armored against the injury to their spiritual
life to which the tongue of flattery exposes them.
To say to one Christian, you wish you possessed his spiritual gifts; to
another, what would you not give to possess his faith; to tell a third,
that you envied his power in prayer; a fourth, that he had outstripped
you in the Christian race; and to assure a fifth, that his exalted views
of Christ and his gigantic grasp of truth put your own spiritual attainments
to the blush!—is this language fit to address to a worm of the dust,
to a fallen creature, to one like ourselves—a debtor to the free
and sovereign grace of God?
Surely not: it is cruel, unkind, unchristian; it is acting towards a believing
brother as the eagle does to the tortoise, lifting him to a great height
but to make his fall the greater. If a brother does not come short in
that very gift or grace which you have so unwisely and so highly commended,
it is just because Christ has interfered to prevent his fall. “Of
all wild beasts, preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame ones, a flatterer.”
What is flattery but aiding the work of Satan, the great deceiver of our
race? There is a proverb—“When flatterers meet, the devil goes
to dinner.” That is, when those traitors to our virtue, happiness,
and usefulness confederate against us, Satan’s work is so well done
that he has time for other employments. Flattery is the food of courts
and not the nourishment upon which a true humble-minded believer lives.
He desires to walk humbly with God; and yet, without courting human adulation,
to preserve a good name more precious than ointment among his fellows.
He thus deprecates the evil of flattery, and more especially that of religious
flattery.
I do not overlook the great difference between a delicate and proper appreciation
of piety and merit, and the false and exaggerated praise which, in some
cases wounds the susceptibility, and in others inflates the vanity of
those upon whom it is lavished. To a mind rightly constituted, to a heart
in much communion with God, nothing is more painful than undeserved, or
even excessive commendation. Yet, as I have remarked, we must discriminate
between an unmeaning adulation, and kind and encouraging appreciation
of those endowments and powers which God has given for the good of man
and for the glory of His great name.
Thus have we attempted to illustrate the first clause of the text “death
is in the power of the tongue”—a death more bitter, to a holy,
high-minded individual, than the fatal dart of the last dread foe. More
welcome to him the shadow of the tomb draping all the present, than a
life lived on amid the cruel strife of false, and the undying taint of
defaming, tongues.
But there is a theological view of this first clause of the passage strikingly
and solemnly true. There is death in the preaching of the law. The Word
of God is a two-edged sword; the law, in its slaying, condemning power,
is one edge of this weapon of divine temper. “The law works death.”
“I was alive without the law once,” says the Apostle, “but
when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment
which was ordained to life I found to be unto death.” Look not, therefore,
O man, O woman, to the works of the law for spiritual life: it is not
an instrument of life, but of death—not of justification, but of
condemnation.
And he who has broken, and therefore is under the penalty of God’s
law, yet expects to be saved by it, is as infatuated as the criminal,
who, under the sentence of death, yet sues out his pardon upon the footing
of that very act of the legislature by virtue of which he is condemned.
It was a favorite saying of the Countess of Huntingdon—“I would
run away from the law, considered as a covenant of works, as fast as I
would from my sins.” The influence of the law upon all religious
duties and obedience is much the same as the frost upon the silvery stream:
it congeals and hardens them with the rigidity and coldness of death.
But the warm rays of the Sun of Righteousness thaws the hardness and dissolves
the icy fetters of the soul, and repentance and love then sweetly flow.
Oh! see that all your religious duties are ‘evangelical’; that
is, that they are the result of faith in and of love to Christ. See that
they flow from a sight of a crucified Savior, that they are fruits growing
beneath the cross of Immanuel. No fruit of godliness like to that found
there! no contrition so deep, no faith so strong, no love so intense,
no surrender of the heart so unreserved. Truly they are “precious
fruits brought forth by the sun.”
There is also death in the tongue of him who preaches false doctrine.
The minister of soul-destroying error is the minister of death! All teaching
which is opposed to the Gospel of Christ, which misleads men on their
way to eternity by failing to show to them the way of life—all preaching
which denies the work of the Spirit in regeneration; which substitutes
human merit for the atoning work and sacrifice of Christ; which builds
up men in their own doings and works as a meritorious preparation for
heaven. All pulpit instruction which tends to lower the holiness of the
truth, to relax the bond of moral obligation, to suppress, in the professor
of the Gospel, an ardent desire after godliness—we say all such teaching
is fatal to souls, and that, therefore, there is death in the power of
the preacher’s tongue.
As you value your eternal well-being go not in the way of such false teachers—these
murderers of souls! Recoil from them as you would from the wily serpent;
reject their ministries as you would the poisoned cup; cease to hear the
instruction that causes to err from the words of knowledge and from the
way of life. “Woe unto those who call evil good, and good evil; that
put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.”
But not less true is the second clause of our text, “LIFE is in the
power of the tongue.” God has invested sanctified speech with a life-giving
power. There is a vitality in the hallowed tongue peculiarly its own.
This is true of words of kindness and love spoken in cases of mental depression,
or on seasons of temporal or spiritual trial. “Heaviness in the heart
of man makes it stoop: but a kind word makes it glad.” “A word
spoken in season, how good is it! A word fitly spoken is like apples of
gold in pictures of silver.” Such is the testimony of God’s
Word! Who will not say there is life in that tongue?
To go to such a one and speak of Jesus, to unfold the fulness of His grace,
to tell of the faithfulness of God to His promises, His unchangeable love
to His people, to remind the believing soul of the stability of the covenant,
of the certain salvation of all who are in Christ Jesus—Oh ! there
is life—sweet, soul-uplifting life—in the power of that tongue
that speaks to me words of heart-cheer when it is sad, to my mind, words
of hope when desponding; that tells me of JESUS when going about and inquiring,
“Have you seen Him whom my soul loves?”
There is LIFE in the power of the tongue of him who preaches the Lord
Jesus Christ. When we preach Jesus we preach the only true life. Jesus
is emphatically the Way of Life—Yes, He is Life itself. “I have
come that you might have life.” “I am the Life.” “When
Christ, who is our life, shall appear.” It is impossible, then, to
preach the Lord Jesus and not be an instrument of spiritual life. However
deficient in acquired lore, and limited in human talent, however unrecognized
by the Church and unhonored by the schools, the man who makes known the
Lord Jesus, the Savior of sinners, possesses a tongue of life at whose
irresistible power the tomb of the soul flies open and spiritual death
gives up its prey.
Was there no life in those precious words of the manacled Apostles, addressed
to the trembling jailer at Philippi, in reply to his momentous inquiry—“What
must I do to be saved?” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
you shall be saved.” But, had the Apostles instructed him to perform
some mighty achievement, to do some great thing of himself; had they told
him to trust to the mercy of God, to live a pure and honest life, to give
alms, to build a synagogue, and, then, by completing his round of meritorious
doings, to present himself regularly at the sacramental table; there had
not been life, but death in the answer.
Oh who can estimate the awful results of a ministry in which there is
nothing of Christ? Who can gauge the tremendous consequences of such teaching
of immortal souls as proves but a “savor of death unto death”?
But he who lifts up the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners,
His work the only salvation of the soul, His cross the only way to glory—he
who proclaims the all-sufficiency of His merit, the guilt-cleansing efficacy
of His atoning blood, the freeness of His grace, the boundlessness of
His love, His willingness and ability to save to the uttermost extent
of wretchedness and woe—preaches the Gospel with a tongue of life!
Such a Christ-exalting minister is a “savor of life unto life.”
Such is the glorious message we proclaim to you, my reader. Are you anxious
about your soul? Are you sin distressed, guilt-burdened? Do you ask, what
you must do to be saved? My answer is based upon a free grace salvation—Look
unto Jesus, and be saved. Come to Christ just as you now are, with no
price in your hand, with no self-preparation; meriting nothing, doing
nothing; and accept a present and full pardon, a free and perfect justification,
all provided for you in Christ.
You are to believe not in a doctrine, or in a creed, or in a dogma, or
in a Church: but, you are to believe in the Lord Jesus, in a personal
Savior. Christ is the Object of faith, and Christ alone. And will He spurn
you, will He reject you, will He cast you out? Oh never! He has given
His word; and heaven and earth shall pass away, but that word shall never
fail—“Him that comes unto Me, I will in no way cast out.”
Oh, into what perfect peace, into what holy joy, into what assured hope
of glory will one act of simple, child-like faith in the Lord Jesus in
a moment bring your soul! Try it; my reader: it is your life.
There is LIFE in the tongue of wise and timely counsel. It is a great
power to be able, with the meekness of wisdom, to advise in the time of
perplexity and doubt; to speak words which shall be as light upon the
dreary path of some tried and perplexed child of God, anxious to know
and do His will, yet needing the wise and gentle guidance of an experienced,
God-fearing friend. If the Lord has conferred upon you this power, use
it; and life to some drooping heart, some embarrassed mind will flow in
a sacred stream from your words. “A word spoken in season, how good
is it.
There is LIFE in the tongue of kindness, sympathy, and love. To this many
a sad and sorrowing heart, and many a deep, bleeding wound, which words
of human sympathy have comforted and healed, will testify. “The law
of kindness upon the tongue” is a law of life to the heart whose
joys sorrow has withered, and whose hope death has slain. Oh, who can
describe the exchange of the shroud of woe, for the robe of gladness;
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, which one word of kindness
creates? This power is ours! Ours is the angel mission of folding around
a tempest-tossed soul the wings of love and sympathy. Be faithful to it:
this is no hard task—nothing easier. Ourselves partaking of the “kindness
and love of God;” soothed and comforted by the words and sympathy
of Christ, we shall know how to speak a word in season to a wounded spirit.
“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our tribulations,
that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, by the comfort
with which we ourselves are comforted of God.”
Lord! we accept with cheerful submission the discipline of sorrow, however
keen and crushing, which perfects us for a mission so noble, Christ-like,
and Divine. If some child of suffering, some son or daughter of grief,
shall in future time reap soothing and joy from this sowing in tears,
we bow our head meekly to the cup Your love has ordained, and from our
heart would say, Your will be done!”
My dear reader, let this be the practical conclusion of the whole matter—guard
your speech, bridle your tongue, seek that grace may be poured into your
lips; reflect that life and death are enthroned upon this little member.
Think how great a fire one spark may kindle! Ever remember before you
speak, that you are in the presence of God; that Christ hears you, and
that an angel stands by to record your words in a book, and that, “every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the
day of judgment; for by your words you shall be justified, and by your
words you shall be condemned.” “Set a watch at the door of my
lips, lest I speak unadvisedly with my tongue. Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of any heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.”
And let David’s holy, determined resolution be ours: “He that
works deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that tells lies shall
not tarry in any sight.” And may the characters of those who shall
abide in the Lord’s tabernacle, and dwell in His holy hill, belong
to us—“He that backbites not with his tongue, nor does evil
to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor, but in
whose eye a vile person is contemned.”
Lord! purify my lips with a living coal from off your altar; and ever
grant that my speech may be seasoned with the salt of your grace, that
it may administer instruction, edification, and comfort to those that
hear!
“One angry moment often does what we repent for years,
It works the wrong we never make right by sorrow or by tears;
It speaks the rude and unkind word, it wounds the feeble breast,
It strikes the reckless sudden blow, it wounds the household rest.
The hand of Peace is frank and warm, and soft as ringdove’s wing,
And he who quells an angry thought is greater than a king;
Shame to the lips that ever seek to stir up jarring strife,
When gentleness would shed so much of Christian joy through life.”