verent use of it towards God; and the ninth, all uncharitable use of it towards men. So absolute is the connection between the condition of the heart and the control of the lips that our words are declared to supply the test by which we shall be judged before God. "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Nay, our Lord carries the lesson still further, with an emphasis that may well attract our attention: "I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." (Matt. xv. 36, 37.)

It does not require much knowledge of the heart, or of the world outside, to see the reasonableness of this. The government of the tongue is closely bound up with personal religion, and with the exercise of that mysterious influence exercised either for good or for evil, by every living man over those with whom he is brought into

contact.

I. The tongue is the natural expression of the state of the heart. We may estimate a man's character with tolerable accuracy by the nature of his conversation. The natural and instinctive connection between the two can only be interrupted by an acquired habit of duplicity. Whether a man talks much or little, his words will. express his thoughts. All must be conscious of the mode in which our feelings spring, as it were, into words, and find utterance for themselves before we have time to watch and check the haste of the tongue.

Many and many a word is spoken which a moment's thought, or an instantaneous glance of conscience, would serve to correct, and which perhaps is scarcely spoken before we would give all we have never to have uttered it. The hasty passion, the bitter hate, the cherished thought of vengeance, the contemptuous scorn and cruel petulance on the one side, and love and joy, and hope and gratitude on the other, spontaneously frame themselves into words, so intimate is the connexion between the thoughts of the heart and the utterances of the lips. But hence there arises a great law of our nature. By encouraging the utterance, we encourage the feeling which is uttered; by suppressing the utterance, we suppress the feeling. Evil words are, therefore, twice sinful. They are sinful because they are the utterances of sin-the outward expression of the evil that works beneath; and they are sinful because they encourage sin, and feed it into more active and fatal life.

II. Men are greatly under the influence of their own words. We are not conscious how much we are affected by them. A man accustomed to speak in a certain way, will find his thoughts come to follow his words. We believe what we say, and many a man deceives himself by this means. He accustoms himself to assert certain things, say, in regard to himself, and at last he comes to believe them. Our thoughts produce our words, and yet our words react upon our thoughts. For instance, a person cannot form the habit of using sacred words

irreverently without gradually losing some of his reverence for sacred things. Hence, too, the evil of that exaggerated mode of speaking, which is always in extremes: the feelings thus become as excitable, exaggerated, and unreal as the words which express them.

III. If our words act upon ourselves, they act still more powerfully upon others. The mind of God alone can adequately measure the mischief done by words. I do not mean so much the direct and intentional as the indirect and unintentional influence of hasty, profane, and thoughtless words -words which are the mere unconscious offshoots of the inward thoughts. For instance, in the family circle, what unhappiness do they not produce, rankling perhaps in the mind of the hearer for years after they have been forgotten by the mind of the speaker. In the general contact of man with man, the mischief done by the tongue is utterly incalculable. Homes have been blasted, hearts broken, reputations injured, and lives destroyed by the influence of casual words, by whispered rumours, and false reports, and cruel slanders. Nay, still more, souls are murdered by

them. Cases are not unknown where the inconsistent expressions of a Christian man, even a hasty word, a passionate exclamation, has borne its evil. fruit for all eternity in a ruined soul stumbling over this rock of offence. Or, a man drops into the ears of another thoughtless expressions, insinuating subtle doubt of some Christian truth. The uttered

doubt has, perhaps, lain upon the very surface of the speaker's heart, and has taken no hold of his real self; or he has outlived the doubt, and has himself passed into the sunshine of perfect faith; and he is unconscious that his words have lived and rankled in the hearer's soul, and have poisoned it for ever. Of all the mischiefs wrought in this sad world of ours, and of all the frequent causes of them, none have been, perhaps, so numerous, none so fatal as those wrought by the tongue. To a man who has watched the world the inspired words of St. James will not appear too strong to express even his own experience: "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell" (James iii. 6).

We need not wonder, therefore, that the Word of God should not only contain earnest cautions against sins of the tongue, but that it should supply, likewise, directions for its regulation. Directly or indirectly, by immediate maxim, by natural inference, or by some general principle, there is scarcely a danger for which we may not find in its blessed pages an appropriate remedy. Earnest attention needs to be given to the casual sins of the tongue, the inconsistencies arising from the negligence, the carelessness or the mistakes of Christian men; and this on points of common obligation lying outside the countless differences of intellect, habit, or natural temperament by

which conversation is affected. To reach these latter influences, and attempt to bring them under any regular rule, would be folly, and a mere attempt to assimilate things which God has made to differ. But there are certain common points well worthy of all attention.

How to talk. Does Scripture supply regulations for this? Certainly it does. Our mode of talking should be modest and unobtrusive, for humility of mind is one of the chiefest of virtues. The Christian is charged "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly" (Rom. xii. 3). Again, "Be kindly affectioned one to another, in honour preferring one another" (Rom. xii. 10). Again, "All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility” (1 Pet. v. 5). But humility of mind must show itself in modesty of demeanour, and nowhere more than in conversation; not obtrusive, bold, rash, but gentle, unassuming, and ever exhibiting the deference due to one another. We should talk unaffectedly, content to be what God has made us, avoiding all assumption and peculiarity, and shunning those merely conventional forms of speech, sometimes adopted by Christian persons out of mere habit, and which are needlessly offensive to those who have no experience of the power and reality of grace. Let us seek to be natural and simple. We should talk kindly, that we may not be of those whose words are like "the piercing of a sword." The principle