A Wholesome Tongue
“A wholesome tongue is a tree of life.” — xv. 4.
NOT a silent tongue; mere abstinence from evil is not good. The beasts that perish speak no guile; what do ye more than they? The tongue of man is a talent given by God, and the commandment, “Occupy till I come,” is deeply graven in its wondrous structure. He who hides his talent in the earth is counted slothful and wicked. The servant vainly pleads that it was not employed for evil: the Master righteously condemns because it was not employed for good. Idleness is evil under the administration of God. — Not a smooth tongue: it may be soft on the surface, while the poison of asps lies cherished underneath. “The mouth of a strange woman is smoother than oil.” A serpent licks his victim all over before he swallows it. Smoothness is not an equivalent for truth. — Not a voluble tongue: that active member may labour much to little purpose. It may revolve with the rapidity and steadiness of manufacturing machinery, throwing off from morning till night a continuous web of wordage, and yet not add one grain to the stock of human wisdom by the imposing bulk of its weightless product. — Not a sharp tongue: some instruments are made keen-edged for the purpose of wounding. “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword” (xii. 18). The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. A great apostle used sharpness, and so did his Lord before him; but unless we partake of their spirit, we cannot safely imitate their plan. He would need to have a loving heart and a steady hand who ventures to cut with a sharp tongue into the quick of abrother’s nature. — Not even a true tongue: truth is the foundation of all good in speech, but it is the foundation only. Wanting truth, there is only evil: but even with it there may be little of good. Truth is necessary, but not enough; the true tongue must also be wholesome.
Before anything can be wholesome in its effects on others, it must be whole in itself. The tongue must be itself in health before it can diffuse a healthful influence around. But our tongue, as an instrument of moral agency, is diseased. It is in the human constitution the chief outgate from the heart, and the heart of the fallen is not in health. The scripture of the Old Testament quoted by Paul in the New, declares, with memorable pungency, that it is corrupt and corrupting: “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit” (Rom. in. 13). Government, watching over the health of the nation, will not permit a grave to lie open. Because there is putridity in its heart, its mouth must be closed. The throat of a grave, if left open, would breathe forth pestilence. Alas! the moral disease is pouring out moral infection, and no government can stay the plague. Every corrupt heart is generating the poison, and every unwholesome tongue is a vent for its escape. The air is tainted. Men both give out and draw in corruption like breath.
Parents who wisely love their children greatly dread unwholesome tongues. Sometimes they are in great straits as to the path of duty. They cannot take the young out of the world, and yet they are afraid to send them into it. When a father hears a torrent of polluting words from a foul tongue on the street, or in a public conveyance, and returns home to look upon his little boy, ignorant as yet of full-grown wickedness, he could almost wish that his child were deaf, and so shielded on one side from the great adversary’s onset. If the wish were lawful, you would be inclined to say, Let his ear be open to the song of birds and the murmur of streams, to the rushing of the winds and the roll of the thunder; but let him not hear the voice of man until he hear it new in the kingdom of the Father.
But this cannot be; we and our children are in the world, and the world teems with evil. In particular, it is like a lazar-house because of unwholesome tongues. “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James iii. 6, 8). One would think that parents, in view of such a pestilence abounding, would not be in haste to “bring out” their children at a tender age into the infected region. True love would rather shield them as long as possible from the inevitable contact, and in the meantime move neaven and earth to have the shield of faith interposed between the conscience of the child and the fiery darts of the Wicked.
Dogs licked the sores of Lazarus as he lay at the rich man’s gate, and the poor cripple reaped a benefit from their kindness. The dumb brute has a wholesome tongue, and an instinct that prompts him to use it. Would that his master’s tongue were as soft, and its touch as soothing! The best things, corrupted and misapplied, become the most mischievous. Our tongue is fearfully and wonderfully made! Great is its capacity for hurt or for healing. If it were attuned to the praise of God, it would be a medicine for the sufferings of men. If Christians were like Christ, they would be more happy and more useful. He spake as never man spake. When men had sunk helpless in a deadly disease, “He sent his word and healed them.” For a wounded spirit there is no medicine like love-drops distilling from a wholesome tongue: even where they fail to heal the wound, they will soothe the sufferer, and so lighten his pain. A high place in the sight of God and man has the physician who remains on the battle-field after the conquering host has passed on, tending indiscriminately wounded friends and wounded foes; or who plies his task in a plague -stricken city, entering every house where a chalk-mark on the door indicates that the infection is within. His is an honourable work. Angels, eyeing him as they pass, might well envy his employment and his reward. But every one of us might attain a rank as high, and do a work as beneficent. If broken limbs lie not in our way, broken spirits abound in our neighbourhood. Sick hearts are rife on the edges of our daily walk. Although we lack the skill necessary to cure a bodily ailment, we may all exercise the art of healing on diseases that are more deeply set. A loving heart and a wholesome tongue are a sufficient apparatus; and the instincts of a renewed nature should be ever ready to apply them in the time and place of need.
The tongue, when it is whole and wholesome, “is a tree of life.” In a former chapter (x. 11) the similitude employed was a well; but whether the manner of the diffusion be like a well sending forth its streams, or like a tree scattering its ripened fruit, the influence diffused from a good man is “life.” The product which issues by the tongue from a renewed heart is healthful in its character, and spreads as seed spreads in autumn from the plant on which it grew. “Winged words” have fluttered about in poetry and prose through all the languages of the civilized world from old Homer’s day till now. The permanence and prevalence of the expression prove that it embodies a recognised truth. Words have wings indeed, but they are the wings of seeds rather than of birds or butterflies. We are all accustomed to observe in autumn multitudes of diminutive seeds, each balanced on its own tiny wing, floating past on the breeze. Some of these have fallen from useful plants, and some from hurtful weeds; but the impartial wind bears the good and the evil alike forward to their destiny. Some plants are prolific almost beyond the reach of arithmetic or of imagination, and their seeds in countless multitudes are scattered indiscriminately over all the land. Words are like these seeds, in their varied character, their measureless multitude, and their winged speed. They drop off in inconceivable numbers: they fly far: they are widely spread. It is of deep importance that they should in their nature be good, and not evil. The tongue is a prolific tree; it concerns the whole community that it should be a tree of life, and not of death. Considering the influence of our words on the world, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness!
In modern times the art of printing has given wings to human words in a measure that seems to vie even with the fecundity of nature. The quantity thus carried is such as to baffle all our powers of description or conception. But in the department of art, as in that of nature, there is great variety in the character of the seed, and a terrible impartiality in the law of diffusion. When the evil seed is permitted to grow, the wings are at hand to carry it across the world. It is the part of those who love their kind, and desire to see this sin-cursed earth become a paradise again, to keep down the growth of noxious seed, and cultivate the better kinds. The quantity of vain and hurtful words that are flying across the world on printed pages is enough to make us tremble for the coming generation; but to stand and tremble in presence of the danger is neither useful nor manful. When we hear of unwholesome words being sent week after week by the ton-weight to the principal reservoirs in the large cities, and thence by various channels distributed over all the land, we should indeed be aroused to take the measure of the crisis, but not lose heart or hand at the discovery of its magnitude. We have words and wings for them as well as those who are against us: we have precious seed in our hands, and a world to spread it on. Our Father in heaven expects us to labour on his field. We have a good Master and pleasant work. In the labour of laying the words on these pages we are cheered by the thought that we are attaching wings to the living seed of saving truth, that it may be cast on the winds at a venture, and borne away, under the direction of an all wise Providence, to some needy, desert place. As we frame these sentences, we are like a humble artisan in his workshop, fashioning wings for the word of righteousness. We are encouraged to pray, as they pass from our hands, that, borne on these wings far beyond our sight, that word may drop in Indian jungle, or Australian mine, or American backwood, on some lone exile, and find entrance into the weary broken heart which at home in prosperity had been always hard and closed.
Ye who love the Lord and the brethren, wing the seed and give it to the wind. It is God’s gift, and in his keeping. When it goes out of your sight, plead with Him who employs the winds as his angels to guide it to some bare but broken ground. While you pray for the fruitfulness of what has already been scattered, work to scatter more. This or that may prosper; perhaps this and that too. The very mountain-tops shall wave yet like Lebanon with a harvest from the seed of “wholesome words.” The earth shall yet be full of the knowledge of the Lord. The sowers may well wipe their tears away as they go forth, for they shall one day return rejoicing, “bringing their sheaves with them.” The Lord gave the word — the Lord is the Word; great should be the company of them that publish it. (Ps. lxviii.) The shortest and surest method of killing and casting out the mischievous weeds that infest a field, is to get the field covered from side to side with a closely growing crop of precious grain. Wholesome words are the true antidote to the unwholesome. When the enemy sows tares, Christ’s servants have only one way of effectually counter-working him, and that is by sowing wheat. The best way of eradicating error is to publish and practise truth.