TALKATIVE

'A man full of talk.'--Zophar.

'Let thy words be few.'--The Preacher.

'The soul of religion is the practick part.'--Christian.

Since we all have a tongue, and since so much of our time is taken up

with talk, a simple catalogue of the sins of the tongue is enough to

terrify us. The sins of the tongue take up a much larger space in the

Bible than we would believe till we have begun to suffer from other men's

tongues and especially from our own. The Bible speaks a great deal more

and a great deal plainer about the sins of the tongue than any of our

pulpits dare to do. In the Psalms alone you would think that the

psalmists scarcely suffer from anything else worth speaking about but the

evil tongues of their friends and of their enemies. The Book of Proverbs

also is full of the same lashing scourge. And James the Just, in a

passage of terrible truth and power, tells us that we are already as good

as perfect men if we can bridle our tongue; and that, on the other hand,

if we do not bridle our tongue, all our seeming to be religious is a sham

and a self-deception,--that man's religion is vain.

With many men and many women great talkativeness is a matter of simple

temperament and mental constitution. And a talkative habit would be a

childlike and an innocent habit if the heart of talker and the hearts of

those to whom he talks so much were only full of truth and love. But our

hearts and our neighbours' hearts being what they are, in the multitude

of words there wanteth not sin. So much of our talk is about our absent

neighbours, and there are so many misunderstandings, prejudices,

ambitions, competitions, oppositions, and all kinds of cross-interests

between us and our absent neighbours, that we cannot long talk about them

till our hearts have run our tongues into all manner of trespass. Bishop

Butler discourses on the great dangers that beset a talkative temperament

with almost more than all his usual sagacity, seriousness, and depth. And

those who care to see how the greatest of our modern moralists deals with

their besetting sin should lose no time in possessing and mastering

Butler's great discourse. It is a truly golden discourse, and it ought

to be read at least once a month by all the men and all the women who

have tongues in their heads. Bishop Butler points out to his offending

readers, in a way they can never forget, the certain mischief they do to

themselves and to other people just by talking too much. But there are

far worse sins that our tongues fall into than the bad enough sins that

spring out of impertinent and unrestrained loquacity. There are many

times when our talk, long or short, is already simple and downright evil.

It is ten to one, it is a hundred to one, that you do not know and would

not believe how much you fall every day and in every conversation into

one or other of the sins of the tongue. If you would only begin to see

and accept this, that every time you speak or hear about your absent

neighbour what you would not like him to speak or hear about you, you are

in that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar,--when you

begin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at what

the Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins of

the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves--on the

way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning

when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,--how

instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you speak about the absent in a

way you would be astounded and horrified to be told they were at that

moment speaking about you, then you would soon be wiser than all your

teachers in the sins and in the government of the tongue. And you would

seven times every day pluck out your tongue before God till He gives it

back to you clean and kind in that land where all men shall love their

neighbours, present and absent, as themselves.

Take detraction for an example, one of the commonest, and, surely, one of

the most detestable of the sins of the tongue. And the etymology here,

as in this whole region, is most instructive and most impressive. In

detraction you _draw away_ something from your neighbour that is most

precious and most dear to him. In detraction you are a thief, and a

thief of the falsest and wickedest kind. For your neighbour's purse is

trash, while his good name is far more precious to him than all his gold.

Some one praises your neighbour in your hearing, his talents, his

performances, his character, his motives, or something else that belongs

to your neighbour. Some one does that in your hearing who either does

not know you, or who wishes to torture and expose you, and you fall

straight into the snare thus set for you, and begin at once to belittle,

depreciate, detract from, and run down your neighbour, who has been too

much praised for your peace of mind and your self-control. You insinuate

something to his disadvantage and dishonour. You quote some authority

you have heard to his hurt. And so on past all our power to picture you.

For detraction has a thousand devices taught to it by the master of all

such devices, wherewith to drag down and defile the great and the good.

But with all you can say or do, you cannot for many days get out of your

mind the heart-poisoning praise you heard spoken of your envied

neighbour. Never praise any potter's pots in the hearing of another

potter, said the author of the _Nicomachean Ethics_. Aristotle said

potter's pots, but he really all the time was thinking of a philosopher's

books; only he said potter's pots to draw off his readers' attention from

himself. Now, always remember that ancient and wise advice. Take care

how you praise a potter's pots, a philosopher's books, a woman's beauty,

a speaker's speech, a preacher's sermon to another potter, philosopher,

woman, speaker, or preacher; unless, indeed, you maliciously wish

secretly to torture them, or publicly to expose them, or, if their

sanctification is begun, to sanctify them to their most inward and

spiritual sanctification.

Backbiting, again, would seem at first sight to be a sin of the teeth

rather than of the tongue, only, no sharpest tooth can tear you when your

back is turned like your neighbour's evil tongue. Pascal has many

dreadful things about the corruption and misery of man, but he has

nothing that strikes its terrible barb deeper into all our consciences

than this, that if all our friends only knew what we have said about them

behind their back, we would not have four friends in all the world.

Neither we would. I know I would not have one. How many would you have?

And who would they be? You cannot name them. I defy you to name them.

They do not exist. The tongue can no man tame.

'Giving of characters' also takes up a large part of our everyday

conversation. We cannot well help characterising, describing, and

estimating one another. But, as far as possible, when we see the

conversation again approaching that dangerous subject, we should call to

mind our past remorse; we should suppose our absent neighbour present; we

should imagine him in our place and ourselves in his place, and so turn

the rising talk into another channel. For, the truth is, few of us are

able to do justice to our neighbour when we begin to discuss and describe

him. Generosity in our talk is far easier for us than justice. It was

this incessant giving of characters that our Lord had in His eye when He

said in His Sermon on the Mount, Judge not. But our Lord might as well

never have uttered that warning word for all the attention we give it.

For we go on judging one another and sentencing one another as if we were

entirely and in all things blameless ourselves, and as if God had set us

up in our blamelessness in His seat of judgment over all our fellows. How

seldom do we hear any one say in a public debate or in a private

conversation, I don't know; or, It is no matter of mine; or, I feel that

I am not in possession of all the facts; or, It may be so, but I must not

judge. We never hear such things as these said. No one pays the least

attention to the Preacher on the Mount. And if any one says to us, I

must not judge, we never forgive him, because his humility and his

obedience so condemn all our ill-formed, prejudiced, rash, and

ill-natured judgments of our neighbour. Since, therefore, so Butler sums

up, it is so hard for us to enter on our neighbour's character without

offending the law of Christ, we should learn to decline that kind of

conversation altogether, and determine to get over that strong

inclination most of us have, to be continually talking about the

concerns, the behaviour, and the deserts of our neighbours.

Now, it was all those vices of the tongue in full outbreak in the day of

James the Just that made that apostle, half in sorrow, half in anger,

demand of all his readers that they should henceforth begin to bridle

their tongues. And, like all that most practical apostle's counsels,

that is a most impressive and memorable commandment. For, it is well

known that all sane men who either ride on or drive unruly horses, take

good care to bridle their horses well before they bring them out of their

stable door. And then they keep their bridle-hand firm closed on the

bridle-rein till their horses are back in the stable again. Especially

and particularly they keep a close eye and a firm hand on their horse's

bridle on all steep inclines and at all sharp angles and sudden turns in

the road; when sudden trains are passing and when stray dogs are barking.

If the rider or the driver of a horse did not look at nothing else but

the bridle of his horse, both he and his horse under him would soon be in

the ditch,--as so many of us are at the present moment because we have an

untamed tongue in our mouth on which we have not yet begun to put the

bridle of truth and justice and brotherly love. Indeed, such woe and

misery has an untamed tongue wrought in other churches and in other and

more serious ages than ours, that special religious brotherhoods have

been banded together just on the special and strict engagement that they

would above all things put a bridle on their tongues. 'What are the

chief cares of a young convert?' asked such a convert at an aged

Carthusian. 'I said I will take heed to my ways that I trespass not with

my tongue,' replied the saintly father. 'Say no more for the present,'

interrupted the youthful beginner; 'I will go home and practise that, and

will come again when I have performed it.'

Now, whatever faults that tall man had who took up so much of Faithful's

time and attention, he was a saint compared with the men and the women

who have just passed before us. Talkative, as John Bunyan so scornfully

names that tall man, though he undoubtedly takes up too much time and too

much space in Bunyan's book, was not a busybody in other men's matters at

any rate. Nobody could call him a detractor or a backbiter or a

talebearer or a liar. Christian knew him well, and had known him long,

but Christian was not afraid to leave him alone with Faithful. We all

know men we feel it unsafe to leave long alone with our friends. We feel

sure that they will be talking about us, and that to our hurt, as soon as

our backs are about. But to give that tall man his due, he was not given

with all his talk to tale-bearing or scandal or detraction. Had he been

guilty of any of these things, Faithful would soon have found him out,

and would have left him to go to the Celestial City by himself. But,

after talking for half a day with Talkative, instead of finding out

anything wrong in the tall man's talk, Faithful was so taken and so

struck with it, that he stepped across to Christian and said, 'What a

brave companion we have got! Surely this man will make a most excellent

pilgrim!' 'So I once thought too,' said Christian, 'till I went to live

beside him, and have to do with him in the business of daily life.' Yes,

it is near neighbourhood and the business of everyday life that try a

talking man. If you go to a meeting for prayer, and hear some men

praying and speaking on religious subjects, you would say to yourself,

What a good man that is, and how happy must his wife and children and

servants and neighbours be with such an example always before them, and

with such an intercessor for them always with God! But if you were to go

home with that so devotional man, and try to do business with him, and

were compelled to cross him and go against him, you would find out why

Christian smiled so when Faithful was so full of Talkative's praises.

But of all the religiously-loquacious men of our day, your ministers are

the chief. For your ministers must talk in public, and that often and at

great length, whether they are truly religious men at home or no. It is

their calling to talk to you unceasingly about religious matters. You

chose them to be your ministers because they could talk well. You would

not put up with a minister who could not talk well on religious things.

You estimate them by their talk. You praise and pay them by their talk.

And if they are to live, talk incessantly to you about religion they

must, and they do. If any other man among us is not a religious man,

well, then, he can at least hold his tongue. There is no necessity laid

on him to speak in public about things that he does not practise at home.

But we hard-bested ministers must go on speaking continually about the

most solemn things. And if we are not extraordinarily watchful over

ourselves, and extraordinarily and increasingly conscientious, if we are

not steadily growing in inwardness and insight and depth and real

spirituality of mind and life ourselves, we cannot escape,--our calling

in life will not let us escape,--becoming as sounding brass. There is an

awful sentence in Butler that should be written in letters of fire in

every minister's conscience, to the effect that continually going over

religion in talk and making fine pictures of it in the pulpit, creates a

professional insensibility to personal religion that is the everlasting

ruin of multitudes of eloquent ministers. That is true. We ministers

all feel that to be true. Our miserable experience tells us that is only

too true of ourselves. What a flood of demoralising talk has been poured

out from the pulpits of this one city to-day!--demoralising to preachers

and to hearers both, because not intended to be put in practice. How few

of those who have talked and heard talk all this day about divine truth

and human duty, have made the least beginning or the least resolve to

live as they have spoken and heard! And, yet, all will in words again

admit that the soul of religion is the practick part, and that the tongue

without the heart and the life is but death and corruption.

Let us, then, this very night begin to do something practical after all

this talk about talk. And let us all begin to do something in the direct

line of our present talk. What a noble congregation of evangelical

Carthusians that would make us if we all put a bridle on our tongue to-

night before we left this house. For we all have neighbours, friends,

enemies, against whom we every day sin with our unbridled tongue. We all

have acquaintances we are ashamed to meet, we have been so unkind and so

unjust to them with our tongue. We hang down our head when they shake

our hand. Yes, we know the men quite well of whom Pascal speaks. We

know many men who would never speak to us again if they only knew how,

and how often, we have spoken about them behind their back. Well, let us

sin against them, and against ourselves, and against our Master's command

and example no more. Let this night and this lecture on Talkative and

his kindred see the last of our sin against our ill-used neighbour. Let

us promise God and our own consciences to-night, that we shall all this

week put on a bridle about that man, and about that subject, and in that

place, and in that company. Let us say, God helping me, I shall for all

this week not speak about that man at all, anything either good or bad,

nor on that subject, nor will I let the conversation turn into that

channel at all if I can help it. And God will surely help us, till,

after weeks and years of such prayer and such practice, we shall by slow

degrees, and after many defeats, be able to say with the Psalmist, 'I

will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my

mouth with a bridle. I will be dumb with silence. I will hold my peace

even from good.'