Article July 30, 1927 Issue

Governing the Tongue

SADIE HYMAN SWETT

In the epistle of James much is to be found on the subject of governing the tongue, and most emphatic and enlightening are these words, to be found in the third chapter: "Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." We cannot consistently affirm, on the one hand, that man is the image and likeness of God, possessing no quality underived from his Maker, and then proceed to talk about a very different kind of man.

Perhaps no story in the Bible illustrates more clearly the words of James than that one told in the book of Acts concerning Paul. It is recorded that a viper fastened on Paul's hand. Seeing it, the barbarians said among themselves, "No doubt this man is a murderer." But Paul destroyed the serpent and its supposedly inevitable effect; and then we read that those who but a moment before had looked upon him as a murderer "changed their minds, and said that he was a god"! Verily, "out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing."

To-day the carnal mind claims to reason in quite the same way as it did in Paul's time. While we may not be seeing our brother as a murderer, he may look to us much like a "poor" Christian Scientist, or a nonprogressive one. And unmindful of the words of James, while our thought is yet unchanged, uncorrected, we do that which not even the barbarians did: we pass along to others our false concept. There is no reasonable excuse for such conduct. God never places man on the side of evil, and one has no business to put himself there. Whatever we are saying or thinking of man we are really also affirming of God, for man is God's reflection. If it is not true of God, it cannot, logically, be true of man. Should we not blush to say anything of man that we would not be guilty of voicing of God?

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