Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF THE
BOOK OF PROVERBS.
BY THE
REV. WILLIAM ARNOT,
ST. PETER’S FREE CHURCH, GLASGOW.
Second Series.
Vol. 2
LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
MDCCCLVIII.
1858
TO THE READER.
WHILE, as a series of practical comments upon texts selected
from a Book of Scripture, the two volumes now published
constitute one whole; yet, from the nature of the sub-
jects, and the manner in which they have been treated,
each is complete in itself, and independent of the other.
For the sake of those who may see this volume first, or
this volume only, the explanatory note which was pre-
fixed to the former volume is reprinted here:—
These Illustrations of the Proverbs are not critical, continuous,
exhaustive. The comments, in imitation of the text, are intended to
be brief, practical, miscellaneous, isolated. The reader may, however,
perceive a principle of unity running through the whole, if he take
his stand at the outset on the writer's view-point—a desire to lay the
Christian System along the surface of common life, without removing
it from its foundations in the doctrines of Grace. The authority of
the instructions must be divine: the form transparently human.
Although the lessons should, with a pliant familiarity, lay themselves
along the line of men's thoughts and actions, they will work no deli-
verance, unless redeeming love be everywhere the power to press
them in. On the other hand, although evangelical doctrine be con-
sistently maintained throughout, the teaching will come short of its
purpose unless it go right into every crevice of a corrupt heart, and
perseveringly double every turn of a crooked path. Without "the
love wherewith He loved us" as our motive power, we cannot reach
vi TO THE READER.
for healing any of the deeper ailments of the world: but having such
a power within our reach, we should not leave it dangling in the air;
we should bring it down, and make it bear on every sorrow that
afflicts, and every sin that defiles humanity. The two extremes to
be avoided are, abstract, unpractical speculation, and shallow, power-
less, heathen morality; the one a soul without a body, the other a
body without a soul—the one a ghost, the other a carcass. The aim
is, to be doctrinal without losing our hold of earth, and practical
without losing our hold of heaven.
Most certain it is that if the Church at any period, or any portion
of the Church, has fallen into either of these extremes, it has been
her own fault; for the Bible, her standard, is clear from both impu-
tations. Christ is its subject and its substance. His word is like
Himself. It is of heaven, but it lays itself closely around the life
of men. Such is the Bible; and such, in their own place and mea-
sure, should our expositions of it be.
Had our object been a critical exposition of the Book, it would
have been our duty to devote the larger share of our attention to the
more difficult parts. But our aim from first to last has been more to
apply the obvious than to elucidate the obscure, and the selection of
texts has been determined accordingly. As there is diversity of gifts,
there should be division of labour. While scientific inquirers re-exa-
mine the joints of the machine, and demonstrate anew the principles
of its construction, it may not be amiss that a workman should set
the machine a-going, and try its effects on the affairs of life.
W. A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE ALL-SEEING 9
II. A WHOLESOME TONGUE 23
III. MIRTH A MEDICINE 30
IV. TASTES DIFFER 37
V. HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR 46
VI. THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY’S PEACE 51
VII. THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE 59
VIII. MERCY AND TRUTH 68
IX. PROVIDENCE 74
X. WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH 88
XL THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT 93
XII. THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE 99
XIII. THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS 104
XIV. FRIENDSHIP 116
XV. THE BIAS ON THE SIDE OF SELF 126
XVI. A WIFE 131
XVII. ANGER 142
XVIII. A POOR MAN IS BETTER THAN A LIAR 147
XIX. THE DECEITFULNESS OF STRONG DRINK 152
XX. THE SLUGGARD SHALL COME TO WANT 164
XXI. WISDOM MODEST, FOLLY OBTRUSIVE 170
XXII. TWO WITNESSES—THE HEARING EAR/THE SEEING EYE 175
XXIII. BUYERS AND SELLERS 187
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
XXIV. A GOOD NAME 195
XXV. THE RICH AND THE POOR MEET TOGETHER 200
XXVI. HIDING-PLACES FOR THE PRUDENT 205
XXVII. EDUCATION 209
XXVIII. THE BONDAGE OF THE BORROWER 228
XXIX. CONVENIENT FOOD 237
XXX. THE RIGHTS OF MAN 244
XXXI. A FAITHFUL FATHER 256
XXXII. THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED 268
XXXIII. A BROTHER'S KEEPER 273
XXXIV. PIETY AND PATRIOTISM 282
XXIV. THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 290
XXXVI. MONARCHS—UNDER GOD AND OVER MAN 296
XXXVII. A FAITHFUL MESSENGER 303
XXVIII. THE FIRE THAT MELTS AN ENEMY 309
XXXIX. A TIME TO FROWN AND A TIME TO SMILE 317
XL. COLD WATERS TO THE THIRSTY SOUL 323
XLI. AN IMPURE APPETITE SEEKS IMPURE FOOD 328
XLII. NOW, OR TO-MORROW 333
XLIII. THE COUNTENANCE OF A FRIEND 342
XLIV. CONSCIENCE 348
XLV. SIN COVERED AND SIN CONFESSED 353
XLVI. THE FEAR OF MAN BRINGETH A SNARE 366
XLVII. PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 379
XLVIII. LEMUEL AND HIS MOTHER 392
XLIX. A HEROINE 397
L. FAITH AND OBEDIENCE—WORK AND REST 407
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF THE
BOOK OF PROVERBS.
I.
THE ALL-SEEING.
"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Hell
and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of
the children of men?"—PROVERBS xv. 3, 11.
THE omniscience of God is usually considered a funda-
mental doctrine of natural religion. Nobody denies it.
Infidelity in this department is acted, not spoken. Specu-
lative unbelievers are wont, in a free and easy way, to
set down at least a very large proportion of the existing
Christian profession to the credit of hypocrisy. Hypo-
crite is a disreputable name, and most men would rather
impute it to a neighbour than acknowledge it their own:
but it is one thing to repudiate the word, and another to
be exempt from the thing which it signifies. That weed
seems to grow as freely on the soil of natural religion as
in the profession of Christian faith. A man may be a
10 THE ALL-SEEING.
hypocrite although he abjures the Bible. Most of those
who reject a written revelation profess to learn from the
volume of creation that a just God is everywhere pre-
sent, beholding the evil and the good; but what disciple
of Nature lives consistently with even his own short
creed?
The doctrine of the divine omniscience, although owned
and argued for by men's lips, is neglected or resisted in
their lives. The unholy do not like to have a holy Eye
ever open over them, whatever their profession may be.
If fallen men, apart from the one Mediator, say or think
that the presence of God is pleasant to them, it is because
they have radically mistaken either their own character
or his. They have either falsely lifted up their own
attainments, or falsely dragged down the standard of the
Judge.
Atheism is the inner spirit of all the guilty, until they
be reconciled through the blood of the cross. All image
worship, whether heathen or Romish, is Atheism incarnate.
The idol is a body which men, at Satan's bidding, prepare
for their own enmity against God. The gods many and
lords many that thickly strew the path of humanity over
time, are the product ever and anon thrown off by the
desperate wriggle of the guilty to escape from the look
of an all-seeing Eye, and so be permitted to do their deeds
in congenial darkness. When spiders stretched their webs
across the eylids of Jupiter, notwithstanding all the efforts
that Greek sculpture had put forth to make the image
awful, the human worshipper would hide, without scruple,
in his heart the thoughts which he did not wish his deity
THE ALL-SEEING. 11
to know. It was even an express tenet of the heathen
superstitions that the authority of the gods was partial
and local. One who was dreadful on the hills might be
safely despised in the valleys. In this feature, as in all
others, the Popish idolatry, imitative rather than inven-
tive, follows the rut in which the ancient current ran.
Particular countries and classes of persons are assigned to
particular saints. With puerile perseverance, the whole
surface of the earth and the whole course of the year
have been mapped and appropriated, so that you cannot
plant a pin point either in time or space without touch-
ing the territory of some Romish god or goddess. In
this way the ignorant devotee practically escapes from
the conviction of an omniscient Witness. "Divide and
conquer" is the maxim of the enemy when he tries to
deaden or destroy that sense of divine inspection which
seems to spring native in the human mind When he
cannot persuade a man that there is no such witness, he
persuades him, as the next best, that there are a thousand.
When a man will not profess to have no god, the same
end is accomplished by giving him many.
We sometimes feel and express surprise that rational
beings should degrade themselves by worshipping blind,
dumb idols, which their own hands have made; but it is
precisely because the idols are blind and dumb that men
are willing to worship them. A god or a saint that
should really cast the glance of a pure eye into the con-
science of the worshipper would not long be held in
repute. The grass would grow again round that idol's
shrine. A seeing god would not do: the idolater wants
12 THE ALL-SEEING.
a blind one. The first cause of idolatry is a desire in an
impure heart to escape from the look of the living God,
and none but a dead image would serve the turn.
From history and experience it appears that idolaters
prefer to have an image that looks like life, provided
always that it be not living. A real omniscience they
will not endure; but a mimic omniscience pleases the
fancy, and rocks the conscience into a sounder sleep. In
the present generation the Romish craftsmen have tasked
their ingenuity to make the eyes of their pictured saints
move upon the canvass. The eyeball of a certain saint
rolled, or seemed to roll, in its dusky colouring within
the dimly-lighted aisle, and great was the effect on the
devotions of the multitude. In places where Protestant
truth has not shorn their superstition of its grosser out-
growths, the procession of the Fete Dieu is garnished
with a huge goggle eye, carried aloft upon a pole, moved
in its socket by strings and pulleys, and ticketed "The
Omniscient." This becomes an object of great attraction
in the crowd. In one aspect it is more childish than
any child's play; but in another aspect a melancholy
seriousness pervades it. This hideous mimicry of omni-
science is an elaborate effort to weave a veil under which
an unclean conscience may comfortably hide from the eye
of God. After all the darkening and distorting effects of
sin, there lies in the deep of a human soul an appetite
for the knowledge of God, which, when it can do no
more, stirs now and then, and troubles the man. It is
the art of Antichrist to lie on the watch for that blind
hunger when first it begins to stir, and throw into its
THE ALL-SEEING. 13
opening mouth heaps of swine-food husks, to gorge and
lay it, lest it should seek and get the bread of life.
This is the grosser method, which grosser natures adopt
to destroy within themselves the sense of divine omni-
science. There is another way running off in an opposite
direction,—more refined, indeed, but equally atheistic,
more manly, but not more godly, than the crowded Pan-
theon of ancient or modern Rome. This other road to rest
is Pantheism. If there is speculation in an age, it becomes
restive under the thick clay of image-worship. There is a
spirit which will not endure a material idol, and yet is not
the spirit of God. Dagon falls, and the philosophers make
sport of his dishonoured stump. Instead of making a little
ugly idol for themselves, they adopt a great and glorious one
made to their hands. God, they say, is the soul of Nature;
and Nature therefore is the only god whom they desire or
need. Sea, earth, air,—flowers, trees, and living crea-
tures, including man, —the creatures in the aggregate,—
the universe is God. In this way they contrive to heal
over the wound which the sense of an omniscient Eye
makes in an unclean conscience. It is the personality of
God that stings the flesh of the alienated. It is easier
to deal with Nature in her majestic movements than with
the Self of the Holy One. Nature heaves in the sea, and
sighs in the wind, and blossoms in the flowers, and bleats
on the pastures. Nature glides gently round in her
gigantic orbit, and stoops not to notice the thoughts and
words of a human being. He may live as he lists, al-
though Nature is there. Philosophy compels him to reject
the paltry, tangible, local gods of all the superstitions.
14 THE ALL-SEEING.
Reason constrains him to own the universality of the
Creator's presence. The problem in his mind is, how to
conceive of the Lord's eyes being in every place, and yet
indifferent to sin. In order to accomplish this, the per-
sonal, with its pungency, must be discharged from the
idea of God. This done, the great idol, though more
sublime, is not a whit more troublesome than the little
one. The creature, whether great or small, whether God's
hand-work or man's, cannot be a god to an intelligent,
immortal human soul. Neither the idolater's stock nor
the philosopher's universe has an eye to follow a trans-
gressor into those Chambers where he commits his abomi-
nations in the dark; but in every place "our God is a
consuming fire" upon a sin-stained conscience. The dark-
ness and the light are both alike to him (Ps. cxxxix 12).
"In every place" our hearts and lives are open in the
sight of Him with, whom we have to do. The proposi-
tion is absolutely universal. We must beware, however,
lest that feature of the word which should make it power-
ful only render it to us indefinite and meaningless. Man's
fickle mind treats universal truths that come from heaven
as the eye treats the visible heaven itself. At a distance
from the observer all around, the blue canopy seems to
descend and lean upon the earth, but where he stands it is
far above, out of his sight. It touches not him at all; and
when he goes forward to the line where now it seems to
touch other men, he finds it still far above, and the point
which applies to this lower world is as distant as ever.
Heavenly truth, like heaven, seems to touch all the world
around, but not his own immediate sphere, or himself, its
THE ALL-SEEING. 15
centre. The grandest truths are practically lost in this
way when they are left whole. We must rightly divide
the word, and let the bits come into every crook of our
own character. Besides the assent to general truth, there
must be specific personal application. A man may own
omniscience, and yet live without God in the world.
The house of prayer is one important place on earth,
and the eyes of the Lord are there when the great con-
gregation has assembled, and the solemn worship has begun.
He seeth not as man seeth. Thoughts are visible to Him.
Oh! what sights these pure eyes behold in that place!
If our eyes could see them, a scream of surprise would
rend the air. "Son of man, hast thou seen what the
ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man
in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The Lord
seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth" (Ezek.
viii. 12). Take your place beside a hive of bees in a
summer day at noon, and watch the busy traffickers.
The outward-bound brush quickly past the heavy-laden
incomers in the narrow passage. They flow like two
opposite streams of water in the same channel, without
impeding each other's motions. Every one is in haste:
none tarries for a neighbour. Such a hive is a human
heart, and the swarm of winged thoughts which harbour
there maintain an intercourse with all the world in con-
stant circulation, while the man sits among the worship-
pers still, and upright, and steady, as a bee-hive upon its
pedestal. The thoughts that issue from their home in
that human heart, bold like robbers in the dark, over-
leap the fences of holiness, suck at will every flower that
16 THE ALL-SEEING.
they reckon sweet, and return to deposit their gatherings
in the owner's cup. The eyes of the Lord are there,
beholding the evil.
The family is His own work, and He does not desert
it. His eyes are open there, to see how father and
mother entwine authority and love, a twofold cord, at
once to curb the children's waywardness and lead them
in the paths of peace; how children obey their parents
in the Lord; how a sister employs that gentleness
whereby God has made woman great, to soothe and win
the robuster brother; how a brother proffers the arm that
the Almighty has made strong, a support for a mother
or a sister in her weakness to lean upon; how masters
become fathers to their servants, and servants lighten
their labour by infusing into its dull heavy body the
inspiring soul of love. In the family, the place where
all these bonds unite, and all these relations circulate,
are the eyes of the Lord its Maker: let all its members
"walk as seeing Him who is invisible."
In the street, in the counting-house, in the shop, in
the factory, these eyes ever are. God does not forget
and forsake a man when he rises from his knees and
plunges into business; the man, therefore, should not
then and there forget and forsake God.
In the tavern, when its doors are shut and its table
spread,—when the light is brilliant and the laugh loud,—
when the cup circulates and the head swims,—in that
place are the eyes of the Lord, and they are like a flame
of fire. It would be a salutary though a painful experi-
ence, if the eyes of these time-killers were opened but for
THE ALL-SEEING. 17
a moment to meet the look of their omniscient Witness,
before he become their almighty Judge.
But the eyes of the Lord are bent on this world, to
behold the good as well as the evil that grows there. Is
there any place among pits thorns and thistles which bears
fruit pleasant to the eyes of its Maker? Yes; there are
fields which he cultivates (1 Cor. iii. 9), and trees which
he plants (Isa. v. 3). On these places his eye rests
with complacency, beholding the growth of his own
grace. One of the places that attract the Redeemer's
eye is a shady avenue where a youth saunters alone on
a summer eve, communing with his own heart, grieving
over its detected backslidings, and breathing a prayer
for reconciliation and renewing. That angular recess in
the ivy-covered rock, dark in daylight by the thickness
of the leafy shade,—that is a place to which the Lord's
eye turns intent; for thither, when the fire burned, the
penitent turned aside unseen; and there he "wept and
made supplication, and prevailed," nor parted from the
place, nor let the Angel of the Covenant go, until he had
gotten a whole Saviour for his soul, and surrendered his
whole soul to the Saviour. This tree of righteousness is
the planting of the Lord. By its freshness and fruitful-
ness he is glorified. The new creation is at least as lovely
in the Creator's eye as the old one was before it was
marred by sin. In that ransomed captive the Redeemer
"shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied."
"Hell and destruction are before the Lord; how much
more then the hearts of the children of men?" This
terrible truth these hearts secretly know, and their despe-
18 THE ALL-SEEING.
rate writhings to shake it off show how much they dis-
like it. The Romish confessional is one of the most
pregnant facts in the whole history of man. It is a
monument and measure of the guilty creature's enmity
against God. We know authoritatively from their own
books what Rome expects her priests to do in the con-
fessional, and history gives some glimpses of what they
actually do. We have felt the glow of indignation in
our breast as we learned how the confessor fastens like
a home-leech on his victim, and how the victim, like a
charmed bird, abandons itself to the tyrant's will. We
have heard how a full-aged unmarried man explores at
will the half-formed thoughts that flutter in the bosom of
a maid, and rudely rakes up the secrets that lie the deep-
est in the memory of a matron. We have wondered at
the blindness and stupidity of our common nature, in
permitting a man, not more holy than his neighbours, to
stand in the place of God to a brother's soul. There is
cause for grief, but not ground for surprise. The pheno-
menon proceeds in the way of natural law. It is the
common, well understood process of compounding for the
security of the whole, by the voluntary surrender of a
part. The confessional is a kind of insurance office, where
periodical exposure of the heart to a man is the premium
paid for fancied impunity in hiding that heart altogether
from the deeper scrutiny of the all-seeing God. Popish
transgressors have no particular delight in confession for
its own sake. Confession to the priest is felt and dreaded
as an evil. The devout often need spurring to make
them come. And when they come, it is on the principle
THE ALL-SEEING. 19
of submitting to the less evil in order to escape the
greater.
The incoming of the Heart Searcher is feared and loathed,
like a deadly and contagious disease. A quack comes up,
and by dint of bold profession, persuades the trembler
that voluntary inoculation with the same disease in a
milder form will secure exemption from the terrible reality.
The guilty, although he does not like to have his con-
science searched,—because he does not like to have his
conscience searched, submits to the searching of his con-
science. The pretending penitent accepts the scrutiny by
a man, in the hope of escaping thereby the scrutiny of
God. The impudent empiric tells his patient that if he
submit to inoculation, the small-pox will never come.
Behold "the human nature of the question;" behold the
philosophy of the confessional.
It is in principle the old question of the heathen,—
"Shall I give the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?" (Mic. vi. 7.) It is not, however, the fruit of the
body that is offered, for they do not make their children
pass through the fire to Moloch now; the spiritual chas-
tity of the soul is laid down as the price of impunity for
sin. God made the human soul for himself. It is vilest
prostitution to abandon it to the authoritative search of
a sinful man. Yet this unnatural sacrifice is made, this
galling yoke is worn, in the vain hope of shutting out the
eyes of the Lord from one place of his own world.
But what fearful dilemma have we here? The Holiest
changeth not when He comes a visitant to a human
heart. He is the same there that he is in the highest
20 THE ALL-SEEING.
heaven. He cannot look upon sin; and how can a
human heart welcome Him into its secret chambers?
How can the blazing fire welcome in the quenching
water. It is easy to commit to memory the seemly
prayer of an ancient penitent, "Search me, O God, and
know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts" (Ps.
cxxxix. 23). The dead letters, worn smooth by frequent
use, may drop freely from callous lips, leaving no sense
of scalding on the conscience; and yet, truth of God
though they are, they may be turned into a lie in the
act of utterance. The prayer is not true, although it is
borrowed from the Bible, if the suppliant invite the All-
seeing in, and yet would give a thousand worlds, if he
had them, to keep him out for ever.
Christ has declared the difficulty, and solved it: "I am
the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me" (John xiv. 6). When the Son has
made a sinner free, he is free indeed. The dear child, par-
doned and reconciled, loves and longs for the Father's pre-
sence. What! is there neither spot nor wrinkle now upon
the man, that he dares to challenge inspection by the
Omniscient, and to offer his heart as Jehovah's dwelling-
place? He is not yet so pure; and well he knows it.
The groan is bursting yet from his broken heart: "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 24.) Many stains defile
him yet; but he loathes them now, and longs to be free.
The difference between an unconverted and a converted
man is not that the one has sins and the other has none;
but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against
THE ALL-SEEING. 21
a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled
God against his hated sins. He is out with his former
friends, and in with his former adversary. Conversion is a
turning, and it is one turning only, but it produces simul-
taneously and necessarily two distinct effects. Whereas
his face was to his sins and his back to God, his face is
now to God and his back toward his sins. This one
turning, with its twofold result, is in Christ the Mediator,
and through the work of the Spirit.
As long as God is my enemy, I am his. I have no
more power to change that condition than the polished
surface has to refrain from reflecting the sunlight that
falls upon it. It is God's love, from the face of Jesus
shining into my dark heart, that makes my heart open,
and delight to be his dwelling-place. The eye of the just
Avenger I cannot endure to be in this place of sin; but the
eye of the compassionate Physician I shall gladly admit
into this place of disease, for he came from heaven to
earth that he might heal such sin-sick souls as mine.
When a disciple desires to be searched by the living God,
he does not thereby intimate that there are no sins in him
to be discovered: he intimates rather that his foes are so
many and so lively, that nothing can subdue them except
the presence and power of God.
22 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
II.
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 wicked and slothful.
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 adminis-
tration 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
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 23
piercings of a sword", (Prov. 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 un-
less 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 a brother'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. iii. 13). Government, watch-
ing 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
24 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
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 law-
ful, 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—until it burst forth wholesome from the
ranks of the redeemed round the throne, where they vie
with the unfallen in praising the same Lord.
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.
Hear from the Apostle James a faithful description of the
danger: "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 region of infection.
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 25
True love would rather shield them as long as possible
from the inevitable contact, and in the meantime move
heaven and earth to have the shield of faith interposed
between the tender conscience of the child and the fiery
darts of the wicked one.
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 sooth-
ing! The best things, corrupted and misapplied, become
the most mischievous. Our tongue is fearfully and won-
derfully made! Great is its capacity for hurt or for heal-
ing. 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 spike. 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 in-
dicates that the infection is within. His is an honourable
work. Angels, eyeing him as they pass, might envy him
the work which he has got in the service of the common
26 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
Lord. 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 whole-
some 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 it 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 lan-
guages 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
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 27
are prolific almost beyond the reach of arithmetic or of
imagination. These countless multitudes are scattered
indiscriminately over all the land. Words are like these
seeds, in their varied character, their measureless multi-
tude, and their winged speed. They drop off in incon-
ceivable 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 in-
fluence 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 con-
ception. 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 quan-
tity of vain and hurted 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
28 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
after week by the ton-weight to the principal reservoirs
in the large cities, and thence by various channels distri-
buted 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. Christians should take
heart and hope. 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 in the very act of attaching wings
to the living seed of saving truth, that it may be cast on
the winds at a venture, and borne way, under the direc-
tion of an all-wise Providence, to some needy, desert
place. As we frame these sentences, we are like a humble
artisan in his work-shop, fashioning wings for the word of
righteousness. We are encouraged to pray, as they pass
from our hands, that on these wings that word may be
borne far beyond our sight, and that it 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 is 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
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 29