Page images
PDF
EPUB

one before the public eye to cover with more shame the memory of a wicked and designing man. I should be the last, I hope, to vilify the dead; but if a general reference to a dead man's vices-vices which are proved in the ruins of many a cottage, and the dispersion of many a family, can act as a warning to the living, it is no want of charity to make it. But admit if you like, that it were better to let the graves of the dead conceal their failings, it is at least fair to turn to the living; and, if there are any of our political mob-leaders here now, I would warn them to desist from their unmanly and inhuman course. I would bid them listen to the cries of children whose fathers their sophistry is poisoning, and look at the tears of sisters, wives, and mothers, whose brothers and husbands their rowdyism is bewitching. I would point them to the idleness which follows on the heels of the discontent they create, the want that follows upon that, and the long funeral procession of woes which succeeds upon these, and entreat them to let the honest man live by honest toil, and win his way, and buy his rights, by virtue and by industry. I would warn them to pause in their rascally impostures, before the devil, whom they are trying to cheat, himself shall tear the mask from before their faces, and the ghosts of neglected little ones shall rise from the graves which they have dug for them, and curse them from the ground. My friends, I know it is bad policy in me to talk to you in this strain, but I do so because I do not care for your frowns if I can but promote your social, your domestic, and your eternal happiness. I have no word to retract that I am aware of; and I have but one regret upon my mind just now, namely, that I have filled up all my time without leaving space to entreat you all to come to Christ. Seek to obtain a seat in heaven, whatever may be your status upon earth. Become a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem. Don't seek for the protection of the ballot to hide your colours from your fellow-man, but openly set him a good example by boldly giving a "plumper" for Christ. No patronage can compare with His approbation, His favour is life, His lovingkindness is better than life. And that favour he offers to you now. He asks no property qualification. He gives it you without

money and without price, and if you will only take it at His hands, you will find, however much men may tamper with your liberties that you enjoy a happier freedom than they can either give or take away, even the liberty wherewith Christ can set you free.

Hold your Tongue.

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue."-PROVERBS, Xviii. chapter, part of 21st verse.

DEADLY and destructive weapons are not without their use, but it is well that they should be under the control of those who use them. It is essential to the efficiency of a soldier that he should be assiduously trained to bear arms, and that he should be carefully drilled in the arts of attack and defence. The consignment of a sword, a bayonet, or a musket, to unskilful and unpractised hands, has often been productive of sad consequences, either to the uninitiated tyro himself, or else to his companions near him. In many of the country towns of our land there is, as you know, a body of men called yeomanry, whose practice it is to reverse the aspiration of the prophet, and instead of beating their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, they annually beat their ploughshares into swords, and their pruninghooks into spears, by laying aside their peaceful implements of husbandry, and arming themselves with the weapons of warfare, and turning out to go through some clumsy and unmilitary evolutions which they call a review. The consequence is that they are guilty of egregious, ludicrous, and sometimes disastrous mistakes lacerating the limbs of their companions in their attempts to draw their swords, and plunging them into the sides of their horses in trying to return them to the scabbard. In like manner children are never entrusted with instruments of destruction or mischief, lest the consequences of their weakness or inexperience should prove dangerous to themselves or to others.

Nor do these remarks apply simply to those cases in which the instrument of evil may or may not be entrusted to us. We all of us possess, whether we choose it or no, members from which we cannot dissociate ourselves, susceptible of the most valuable use and the most glaring abuse. These members will prove to be either a blessing or a curse to ourselves and to our neighbours, just in proportion as we keep them under control, and make them ministers of good or evil.

We all of us have some sort of intuitive perception of right and wrong which may serve as an elemental principle for our guidance in this respect. If we are intent on good, this principle will actuate us to study the fitting application of these members: if we are intent on evil, we shall seek to apply them to the promotion of as much mischief as we can.

But such a principle will not in itself be sufficient for our guidance in this respect: it will act as an auxiliary, but it cannot act alone; for the human judgment is not only liable to error, but it is liable to defeat. Many a man sins against the strong testimony of his own nature: the spirit is often willing, but the flesh is weak. "We have a law in our members warring against the law in our minds, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin which is in our members, so that we cannot at all times do the things that we would." When one member becomes a law unto itself, it becomes tantamount to a relinquishment of all law, and a reckless casting off of all restraint. In some temperaments one member is more unruly, and requires most prayerful restraint; in others, another assumes an overweening mastery, and demands a devout circumspection. We read of the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye,—we are told that if our right eye offend us, to pluck it out and cast it from us if our right hand offend us, to cut it off and cast it from us. Might we not as appropriately speak of the lust of the tongue, and might we not aptly apply the injunction to that member also, and say "If thy tongue offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is better that one of thy members should perish rather than that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Yes, indeed, the wise man when he set in order his many proverbs, never

spoke or penned a wiser or a truer saying than when he wrote that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue."

Solomon could not have spoken more feelingly and truthfully in this respect even if he had been the pastor of a professedly Christian church. For if there is a set of men more lied against and traduced by the lip of detraction—if there is a set of men more basely stabbed in the dark by masked assassins-if there is a set of men whose reputations are more preyed upon by harpies, more juggled with by splenitic poltroons, it is those who profess to try to preach the Gospel. When members of Christian churches shall have learned to govern their tongues-when those who profess to be followers of Christ shall have learned to speak the truth, or else not speak at all—when envy, hatred, and malice shall give place to kindliness and brotherly love—when the tongue of idle scandal shall have been cut out and cast into the hell whence first it hissed its guile-then, nor till then, will the Lord comfort Zion, and begin to build all her waste places.

I would rather hear a thousand oaths poured from a blasphemer's lips, than listen for a moment to the petty, cruel, heartless gossip in which so many dainty lips indulge against their neighbours and their professed friends; for although they are both the words of death, the one involves only the life of him who speaks, while the other mows down with evil and relentless hand each victim that comes within its reach: the one but blasts a solitary tree, the other scatters the entire forest. O that we could but learn to bear each other's burdens-that we did but know how to copy Him who said "Let him that is without sin first cast a stone”—that we were tender of each other's good name—and that we did "to others as we would that they should do to us." Christ tells us, if our enemy ask for our coat, to give him our cloak also. If we are to do this for our enemy, how much more should we do it for our friends. Yet what do we do? We strip the coat and cloak of our professed acquaintance from his back, and tear it to shreds over our tea-tables, and send him naked in reputation and in character to brave the winter of a cold world's discontent. We cannot live, possibly, without differences; but why should these differences make us strangers to each other?

« PreviousContinue »