Isaiah 6:5-8 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the middle of a people of unclean lips… Like the coins which we daily pass through our hands without reading the superscription or testing the metal, we use language for our momentary needs without thinking whence it came to us, or what is its worth. But words are a great gift of God so man, language is our inheritance from the ages that are gone; it grows richer as generations pass from the accumulations of their thought. Descending to us, it educates us. But if language does so much to fashion us, it is an instrument for us of wonderful power in moulding other minds. God's work, or else Satan's work, it is forever doing. 1. If we were to decide what was the commonest fault of the tongue amongst ourselves, we should almost all answer that it was the making light of sin. We can allude to any sinful act in three ways: we can speak of it as the Bible speaks, as a sin against the Holy God; or as prudent men of the world speak, as a mistake, and a blunder, and a want of self-command and dignity; or, as the thoughtless speak, as something to be laughed at and forgotten, a natural and admissible thing. Our language is copious enough for any of these. One of the greatest dangers to souls is impurity. What shall we say of one who in that moment of trial when a soul is suspended between life and ruin, steps in, with no interest in the case except the love of evil, to unloose the bands that hold him to life, and so to help his downfall? If there is any retribution for sin, is not this the sin to call it down? Tell him that modesty is weak and boyish, and that a certain measure of dissipation befits the finished character of a man. Disconnect this sin, in all that you say about it, from every thought of God; speak never of fornication and adultery; language is rich in words that soften and disguise the guilt of this sin. Show how common the sin is. Throw on nature and on youth the blame, if there is blame, of passions too strong for restraint. You will extinguish, by such means, the last spark of that shame, which, fostered in a home where all was pure and chaste, has been sustained till now from extinction by a mother's pure prayers, by her solicitous efforts to keep enfolded even when far off, her darling in the invisible arms of her chaste affection. You will succeed. It were better that a millstone were hanged about your neck, and you drowned in the depth of the sea, than to reap ouch an accursed success against one of those for whom our beloved Lord died. 2. This brings us to another peril of the tongue. Two of the safeguards against sin are the love of God and the fear of judgment. But they suppose a faith that God indeed is, and that He verily is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. A theology of suppositions has no force as a safeguard. Faith may be strong or weak, but it cannot be faith and not faith at the same time. Through this state of division and doubt men have sometimes had to pass, but to linger in it is death. It is not a phase of religion, but a suspension of it. He for whom nor God, nor Christ, nor conscience, nor the life to come for a reality, has nothing on which he may support himself. But how are these questions, this state of doubt, treated in common talk? People mean no harm when they jest about the last new theory in science, yet when they come to consider what is the tendency of the conversation in the circle in which they live, they may have to confess that its tone tends to encourage doubt, and to make them contour with the darkness. 3. Might not even our religious conversation be more fruitful than it is? St. James, from whose Epistle we might derive a complete code of rules for the government of the tongue, says, "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." He is speaking of religions things, of hearing and speaking "the word of truth," mentioned in the former verse. Does not religion suffer often from our hot and impetuous advocacy? We are zealous for God, and that, we think, excuses everything; and we are ready with the nickname or the good story against those whose views differ from our own, and we separate readily from those that will not go as far as we; and the lines that separate Church parties are daily more deeply marked God's great purposes, in the growth of His kingdom, will gain nothing from our noisy warmth. (Archbishop Thomson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. |
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