The Sins of the Tongue
‘T’^HE gift of speech is a marvellous gift. -*- For five whole days of creation’s first week the Almighty was clothing the new-bom earth with light and verdure, and covering it with the myriads of animal life. But it was a voiceless world. At length God made man in his own image, with not only a soul to appreciate his Creator, but a tongue to give expression to his homage, and as the new-formed being gazed around him, the silence was broken, and creation thrilled with the melody of speech.”
Philosophers tell us that every uttered word produces a vibration in the atmosphere; an ingenious theory has therefore been broached that these vibrations never entirely cease! If this were true, we should still be moving among the inaudible words of all our progenitors. This seems fanciful in natural philosophy; but there is a sense in which every uttered word lives for ever. It lives in its influence on the speaker, in its influence on others. Paul’s voice echoes still; millions of God’s faithful messengers, being dead, yet speak!
When Latimer was on trial for heresy, he heard the scratch of a pen behind the tapestry. In a moment he bethought himself that every word he spoke was taken down, and he says that he was very careful what words he uttered. Behind the veil that hides eternity is a record-book, in which our every syllable is taken down. Even the most trivial are not forgotten, for the Lord Jesus tells us that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment!” If our words have an eternity of existence, if good words have so potent an influence to save, if idle, or profane, or poisonous speech work such perennial mischief, how needful is the perpetual utterance of the prayer, “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips!”
I. Among the many sins of the tongue are idle words. “Avoid foolish talking,” says the wise apostle, “and let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt.” There is a peculiar sin in idle talking when we remember that the same expenditure of breath might be productive of so much blessing. When we contemplate a Whitefield in the full rush of his resistless oratory, — now startling a guilty sinner from his slumber on the verge of hell, now leading a bewildered wanderer to Christ, now kindling a saint into rapture, and now melting a rebel into penitence, — we grow indignant at the thought that this prerogative of speech should so often be spent in silly jests and contemptible frivolities. Are time and eternity so lacking in themes of importance that we shall spend our precious breath in fuming emptiness? Surely, if we would but reflect how soon our tongues will lie silent in the tomb, and how speedily the dust will gather upon our lips, we should be awed into more sobriety and purity and carefulness of speech.
Shall we never jest ‘? Does not a pleasant joke sometimes do good like a medicine 1 Very true. There is more marrow in a wise man’s jokes than in a fool’s solemn inanities. But a wise man “sets a watch on bis lips” even when he utters a pleasantry. Especially, be never jests at the wrong time, or about sacred things. He never utters puns and parodies on the Bible; for what men have once laughed at, they seldom reverence. Heartily do I wish that I had never uttered a ludicrous application of a Scripture line, and had never heard one; for the profane or indecent burlesque will often shoot into my mind in the midst of a sermon or a prayer. Wit and humor are allowable when controlled by good sense and by reverence for God; but when we venture into the sublime domains of Revelation, we should put our shoes from off our feet, for the ground whereon we stand is holy. From my soul I abominate Tnerriment in the pulpit. Should he court a grin who should be winning souls to God 1 When an ambassador of Christ descends to make sport in the sacred desk, the devil laughs.
II. Malicious viords are cousins in sin to idle and profane viords. Paul says, “Let all bitterness and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.” Kind words are the oil that lubricates every-day intercourse. They cost little. A phrase of common comfort, “that by daily use hath almost lost its sense, will fall upon the saddened heart like choicest music.” We love to meet certain people. They always have a kind, cheerful, inspiriting word for us. They make us hopeful, and heal our heart-aches. Others we instinctively shun; they always have a sly thrust at somebody; they hatch mean suspicions in our minds; they are ever letting out a drop of acid on some character or cause that is dear to us, and the acid leaves an ugly stain. There was an ancient malediction that the tongue of the slanderer should be cut out; if that summary process were now enforced, we fear that some of our acquaintances might soon lose the “unruly member.” A slanderer is a public enemy. One reckless tongue is enough sometimes to embroil a whole village and to set a church in a flame. “There are six things which God hates; yea, seven are an abomination unto him.” The seventh of the category is “the false witness who speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.”
III. In treating of the sins of the tongue, we must not omit a word in regard to that feculent ichor that exudes from some lips in the form of obscenity. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; and a filthy imagination, like a fever, comes out on the tongue. In companies of youth, in shops and counting-houses, in rooms of colleges and boarding-schools, in ships’ cabins and soldiers’ tents, a vender of obscenities is a walking pestilence. Long years do not obliterate the filthy memories; not even the converting grace of God can wholly purify the unclean chambers of imagery.
And then there is profane swearing. This is the most gratuitous and inexcusable of sins. The man who swears turns speech into a curse, and before his time rehearses the dialect of hell. He waits for no bait; but “bites at the devil’s bare hook.” The shrewd Quaker’s advice to the profane youth, “Swear away, my young friend, till thee gets all that bad stuff out of thee” points to the real source of the vice; for it is out of an evil heart that proceed evil thoughts, false witness, and blasphemies.
We fear that the purest tongue will need much purifying before it is fit to join in the celestial praises of God’s upper temple. For that worship let us attune our voices by ceaseless prayers, by words of love, by earnest vindications of the right, by habitual “speech seasoned with salt” of divine grace. The melody of heaven will spring from a harmony of hearts; each voice there will bear a part in the song of Moses and the Lamb.