Gashmu is a mere name in Scripture. He is mentioned only three
times--twice as acting with Sanballat against Nehemiah, and once as the
authority for a false piece of news. It is reported, wrote Sanballat in
a cruel letter to Nehemiah, that you are plotting against the king, and
"Gashmu saith it." That is what Gashmu stands for in Scripture, a
tale-bearer, a slanderer, a gossip. What an unenviable immortality to
be remembered only as the pedlar of a tale he knew to be untrue!
As long as we live together in society, there will be a kind of gossip
that is inevitable, the kindly or merely casual relation of small and
insignificant matters of fact, as that the painters are in next door, or
that Mrs So-and-So has got a new bonnet. It is not of that I want to
speak.
For there is another sort as deadly as the plague, and in civilised
countries the cruellest and most devilish instrument that one man or
woman can use against another. And that is the inventing of an untrue
report about a man's doings or character, or the unthinking repetition
of the same. That is the pestilence that walketh in darkness; that is
the destruction that wasteth at noonday. And I wish I had the pen to
write of it as it deserves.
It is very, very common. We are all too ready to repeat what we have
heard, with a "Gashmu saith it," as if that certified the tale correct.
And the harm done is simply incalculable. If my house is burned or I
lose my money, I can still get along by the kindness of my friends for a
little, till I find my feet again. But whoever by some lying story
takes away my character, deals me a blow from which there is no
recovering, which my loyalest friends can do nothing to avert. I have
no redress, no compensation, and no help. Any one may be a victim, and
you and I, by thoughtlessly passing on the deadly thing, may all
unconsciously be driving another nail into a man's coffin.
Did you ever lie awake at night and think that even now the cancer may
have begun on YOUR good name, that whispers may be going about among
your friends concerning you? Those who know you will hear it, and will
say, It's a lie! But that won't stop it. And you will never know till
some day you waken up and find that your reputation is in danger. And
not one word or vestige of truth may be in it. It may be a lie pure and
simple, or a colourable counterfeit of some quite innocent truth. That
won't make any difference. It is enough merely to start it, and, like a
stone thrown down an Alpine slope, it gathers others in its train, till
an avalanche swoops down on some unsuspecting head.
When King Arthur enrolled his Knights of the Round Table, he made them
take the oath to "speak no slander." And there is a knightly chivalry
of speech which ought to be the mark of all those who have promised
fealty to Jesus Christ. Our discipleship of Jesus demands of us the
high endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, and that presupposes,
as one of its consequences, that we guard his name against false witness
as carefully as we protect our own. If we hear a good story about some
one, a report that is to his credit and honour, let us blazon that
abroad. We are all far too slow at that, and somehow the tale that is a
little damaging has a far easier and more rapid circulation. Might we
not make more of our brother's successes? Might we not oftener repeat
about him what he is too modest ever to say about himself? It were a
true and kindly Christian act. But never, as we call ourselves servants
of Christ, never do our brother such a grievous irreparable wrong as to
start about him a tale which may not be true. God can and will forgive
you your sins of speech. But even He cannot make clean the character
which a foolish word has sullied.
King Arthur went further, however, than demanding that his knights
should speak no slander. Their vow included the words, "no, nor listen
to it." And that is a high and difficult course to keep. It is not
easy, when you are being told of something that is striking or
sensational of a merely gossipy character, to stop the conversation and
lead it into other channels. It requires great courage and as great
tact. But how many of us ever try it?
If, however, the refusal to listen be regarded as a counsel of
perfection, there remains yet the further injunction--never REPEAT the
gossip you have heard. That at least is homely and possible.
We used to read in our book of Fables of the lamb that noticed this
significant thing about the track that led to the lion's den--that all
the footprints pointed inwards, but there were none returning. "Vestigia
nulla retrorsum." No footprints backwards. It would be a good motto
for us all. Let the stories, the ill-humoured, unkind, uncharitable
sayings that float and wander about everywhere, let them come to us as
they will, but let the traces end there. Be such a person that men may
trace a story from its source down the chain TO you, but never PAST you.
We can do that much at least for our friends. All about us is the
constant, unquiet drift of gossip and distorted half-truth, as restless
as the sand in the desert, dancing and whirling with every puff of wind.
We can do something to arrest that drift. We can be for our friends in
some measure what Isaiah said that God's Servant, when He came, should
be, the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land, stopping the drift of
the sand, and sheltering our friends by our loyalty and our silence.
Don't even repeat the gossip that comes to you, not only for the strong
reason already given, but also for this little one, that you won't
likely repeat it correctly. With all the will in the world, it is one
of the hardest things to retail a story just exactly as you heard it.
Sir Walter Scott, speaking about anecdotes that he had heard, said he
always liked to cock up their bonnets a bit and put a staff in their
hands that they might walk on a little brisker and sprightlier than when
they came to him! But we all do that, without meaning to do it at all.
We add a little bit. We exaggerate just the tiniest fraction, and our
hearer when he repeats the story does the same, and so the matter grows
till it is big enough to do much mischief.
"A Whisper broke the air,
A soft light tone and low,
Yet barbed with shame and woe.
Now, might it only perish there,
Nor further go!
Ah me! A quick and eager ear
Caught up the little meaning sound;
Another voice has breathed it clear,
And so it wandered round,
From ear to lip, from lip to ear,
Until it reached a gentle heart,
And that--it broke."
There is a legend that once a king avoided death in a poisoned cup that
had been handed to him by making over it the sign of the Cross--when it
broke in pieces at his feet. Let us, when we are tempted to retail the
vivid, poisonous piece of scandal, stop and invoke the Spirit of Christ.
Is this that I am going to say about my brother the kind of thing I
should say if Christ were standing by? Am I justified in turning over
that bit of gossip which may be true, but which ought not to be true?
Our duty, who profess and call ourselves Christians, is clear. We are
to speak no slander no, nor listen to it. We are to retail evil about
no man. We are to love one another.