p. 5 | THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 37.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT.

The tongue is a mighty weapon for good or for ill. A tongue set on fire of hell is a terrible scourge to any community. A consecrated tongue is an angel of good. St. James aptly calls the tongue a world of iniquity, and against its lawlessness each table of the law contains a most decided warning. Mere verbal professions are very poor things. “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I command you?” was the searching question of the Master. Our Lord felt the importance of words, empty or sincere, so profoundly as to stake upon this one test the eternal destinies of his people; for He declared, “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” The tongue is thus a very important member, the more so because it is so prompt and willing a servant of the mind within. But how few there are who thus regard it. And thus powerful, and all too often unsuspected, it is often the most treacherous and subtle of all the forces which we wield. A blessing it might always be; a most blighting curse it often is.

How False Witness Is Borne.

We transgress this commandment whenever we entertain a strong suspicion and repeat it as a thing that we know; when we allow the temptation of a biting epigram to betray us into an unkind expression not altogether warranted by the facts. We also violate this commandment when we vindicate ourselves against a charge by throwing blame where it probably might but not certainly ought to lie, or when we are not content to vindicate ourselves without a countercharge which it would perplex us to be asked to prove. All cynicism is false witness. Even if it does not greatly wrong any one of our fellow-men, it does work injury both to society and the cynic. If he is of a coarse fiber, it excuses him to himself in becoming the hard and unloving creature which he fancies that all men are. If he is too proud or too self-respecting to yield to this temptation, it isolates him, it chills and withers his sympathies for people quite as good as, if not better than himself, and whom he thinks of as the herd. For this sin of false witness-bearing in all its forms there is but one remedy, and that is love—we must love our neighbor as ourself. Love sympathizes, love makes allowance for frailty, discovers the germs of good, hopeth all things and taketh no account of evil. What a world this would be if love instead of evil speaking and bearing false witness were the prevailing rule.—Christian Work.