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The Tongue

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 27, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 34, No. 5.

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The Tongue.

THERE are but ten precepts of the law of God, says Leighton, and two of them, so far as concerns the outward organ and vent of the sins there forbidden, are bestowed on the tongue, (one in the first table, and the other in the second,) as though it were ready to fly out both against God and man if not thus bridled.
Pythagoras used to say that a wound from the tongue is worse than a wound from a sword; for the latter affects only the body, the former the spirit—the soul.
It was a remark of Anacharsis, that the tongue was at the same time the best part of man, and the worst; that with good government, none is more useful, and without it, none more mischievous.
Boerhaave, says Dr. Johnson, was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; “For,” said he, “they are sparks which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves.”
We cannot, says Cato, control the evil tongues of others, but a good life enables us to despise them.
Slander, says Lacon, cannot make the subjects of it either better or worse. It may represent us in a false light, or place a likeness of us in a bad one. But we are the same. Not so the slanderer; the slander that he utters makes him worse, the slandered never.
No one, says Jerome, loves to tell a tale of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn then to rebuke and check the detracting tongue, by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.
No man sees the wallet on his own back, says the old proverb, alluding to the fable of the traveler with two packs; the one before stuffed with the faults of his neighbors—the one behind with his own.
It was a maxim of Euripides either to keep silence, or to speak something better than silence.
St. James says, the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.