SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1924, Page 11

SUNDAY READING

(Sy

Rev. A. H. Collins.)

THE SEVEN CARDINAL VIRTUES. NO. 4: TRUTHFULNESS. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be accepted in thy sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”—/Psalm xix., 14. Language is a great and sacred trust. The spoken word is that which distinguishes man from his poor relations of the sub-animal world. Carlyle, who, as John Movely playfully says, preached hi.i “golden gospel of silence, effectively compressed in thirty-five columns,” was eloquent in describing the influence of “the speaking man.” Beyond all question, speech is the most wonderful power with which the Creator has endowed us. In all ages, and on all subjects, the great God has entrusted His message to “the lords of language,” who have played on their audience as on skilled, instruments. The great men of the Bible were prophets and not priests. The symbol of an apostle was not an altar, but a flame-tipped tongue; and it is ever so. The ability to speak clearly and convincingly is one of the indispensable gifts of effective leadership. There is no weapon in the arDitury of truth equal to the weapon of winged words. The men who have moved the world in political reform, in social betterment, and religious awakening, have been those gifted with the power of translating living thought into moving speech; and for this reason tyranny has sought to gag and fetter the spoken word, and the right of free speech has only been won at the cost of stern battling and sacrifice. FACTOR OF QUALITY.

But the best things become the worst if they are. corrupted, and speech which is our glory may become our shame. Words are to the speaker what colour is to the artist, and tone to the musician. Everything depends on the quality. A nation’s life is mirrored in its language. If a people be strangers to certain fine shades of thought and feeling, the fact will be reflected in their words, and vice versa. Archbishop Trench, in his great book on ‘Words,” points out how language reflects the moral life of those who use it. How I wish New Zealanders would ponder that fact, and turn again and again to Trench, especially his chapter on “the morality of words!’* They would learn that dirty words come out of dirty minds; that a poor vocabulary proclaims an impoverished mind; that a man slanders with his tongue because his heart is slanderous. A mgn talks as he is, and when he is judged by his words, he is really judged by his character, for speech is character in expression. Only this must be added, that words not simply express character, they help to make it. The light, flippant, worthless word, not only utters but forms the mind. Conversation is educative. Men are made by what they say, no less than by what they do; for to express an idea is to fix it more firmly in the nund. Impression is by expression. The spoken word is like the nail which fastens the shingle on the roof. The thoughts which mould conduct are set by speech, as surely as the shell of the oyster is formed out of the juices of the bivalve. The tongue shows the state of the system, and until there is a clean tongue there cannot •be a clean man.

FAR-REACHING EFFECTS. This is serious enough, in all conscience, but this is not all. Speech not only injures the man who uses it; it damages those who hear. Think how lives are made yr marred by words, how reputations are built up or pulled down by wordzs! Think how a rough jest will destroy childish reverence; how some hinted evil will taint and corrupt an innocent mind! Thank how a cynical profession of indifference to some moral issue will tilt the balance at a critical moment; how a cheap sneer at sacred things will rub the bloom off a child’s soul, so that it will never be quite the same again. I spoke of the power wielded by the orator or the preacher; but their power is eclipsed by the give and take of everyday talk, in the home, the factory, and the shop, for in this unstudied speech the aggregate influence is greater than th© occasional oration in sermon.

Perhaps you think I have strayed from my subject, which is untruthfulness. But whilst truthfulness is more than verbal accuracy, for it involves actions and spirit. I am anxious to impress you with the importance of a careful and discriminating use of words. Lying and slander, and spiteful speech, are grave offences against the law of truth, and they are painfully rife, just because the traffickers in verbal offal fail to recognise the morality of words, and I wish to press that point. Few of us have any adequate conception of the prominence given to this subject in the Bible. Open the Book of Proverbs, and you will find scarcely a page without some reference to it. Turn to the Psalms, and you discover the truth of Dr. Alexander Whyte's statewill think the Psalmists scarcely suffered from' anything els? worth speaking about, but the evil tongue of their friends and their enemies.’* Ponder the grave words of our Master, “I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment.” Then read the hot and scorching denunciation of Saint James, Tf any man thinketh himself to be religious while he bridleth not his tongue but decei/eth his heart, this man’s religion is vuin.” Affd then, say, if speech be the light, irresponsible thing that some folk imagine! No, indeed, so far from being ligOit and irresponsible, I believe Spurgeon was within the mark when he said, “If all men’s sins were divided into two bundles, half of them would be sins of the tongue.” The ninth commandment, which prohibits bearing false witness, may have special reference to the evidence given in a court of law, and many of us are never eallled to give witness there, but the court of public opinion aits every day, and before that arjgufft tribunal we all give evidence that is either true or false; and there rests on us the

sacred obligation to speak “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I say “the whole truth,” for half truths are the most obstinate and dangerous of lies. UNTRUTHS COMMON. Now anyone who marks the drift of private and public life, the spoken and printed word—aye, the cartoonist at his cleverly cruel work, must admit how painfully common untruth fulness is. Reputations are ruthlessly assailed, and good causes shamefully misrepresented, not so much by explicit statements, as by adroitly phrased sentences or evilly drawn pictures, which suggest more than the author date say quite plainly, 'll-ere are widely read journals in the Dominion that flourish on the garbage picked up by their agents, and given currency in the gutter press. There are so-called religious newspapers that publish prejudiced and misleading reports of men and movements from whom they differ in polities or religion. The slanderer, the talebearer, the backbiter, is everywhere. Nothing is sacred and nothing safe. It is “the pestilence that v-alketh in darkness and the destruction that walketh at noonday.” Anyone of these moral assassins may blight a public man’s prospects, and do more harm to a minister’s work in a day than the minister’s preaching will do good in a twelve month. The slanderer poisons the wine of friendship, robs life of the treasures of love and trust and honour, brings worry and suspicion and heartache, and when, as sometimes happens, the dart is aimed not at an individual, but a group, a party, a policy, the mischief is incalculable. I have seen cartoons and paragraphs which honourable men should sternly reprobate, and when ti’.c-e are published by men bearing the Christian name, I confess to a sense of amazement and horror. There is room for honest differences on questions of national policy, and there is scope for serious argument by serious men, but it is only savages who fight with poisoned weapons. Varied outlook.

i I reckon amongst my friends men k who are convinced individualists. 1 do not agree with them, but I know them to be honourable men. I count amongst > my friends men and women who are 1 convinced Socialists, and I know them to be honourable people, and to suggest that they Sr© moral reprobates is an ofl'ence against truth, and calls for indignation. I know men and women who hold to the most conservative interpretation of religious and theological questions, and they are earnest and devout servants of God. I know others who hold that “there is yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word,” and they too are serious-minded and reverent disciples. To treat them with suspicion and distrust is to sin against truth and charity. Yet people who have never seriously studied these, will pronounce most confidently and condemn in unmeasured terms those who differ from them and will even express doubt of their moral character. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge once confessed to Keble that his mind was sorely perplexed on the subject of Inspiration. Imagine the shock when he was told that “most men who had difficulties on ( that subject were too wicked to be reasoned with.” When we try to track this evil home the task ia not easy. Some have twisted and perverted natures, Irke Shakespear’s lago, who, from sheer love of mischief, inflict pain and injury .by unguarded speech. Let us charitably hope their number is small. With some the evil is the fruit of jealousy, the ignoble malady of ignoble minda. They dim by adroit insinuation the brightness they can never hope to attain, and suggest base motives for noble deeds. It is the revenge that is sweet to mediocrity. But by far the greater part of the sins of the tongue i« simply the result of vacant mindedness. They have no great ii'terests, no grasp of principles, no high subjects to discuss, and because they must talk, they deal in personalities, and the sacred privacy of life, and, as the Spanish proverb has it, “where there is nothing there is the devil.”

WHAT IS THE CURE? But the more practical question is not the cause but the cure, and on that I offer a closing word. First, we can follow the advice given to King Arthur’s Knights to “speak no slander, no nor listen to it.” We can always refuse to allow our ear to be made a rubbish tip. The rule of politeness does not require us to be over tender to ill-natured criticism. A second thing is that w© can seek to realise and teach that “a school

for aoandal” is a pathetic assemblage of the feeble minded. It is really more tian that, but at least let that impression sink in. Thirdly, let us understand that life need not be dull or in-

sipid for any of us. There are topics of enthralling interest which invite our serious investigation. There are treasures of knowledge we have never explored, and books we have never read, and these will supply the subject of wholesome and profitable speech. Keep the mind alert and moving. Look into God’s great beautiful world. Think o f the greatness of existence here, and the glory of the world into which we el all soon enter. Ponder the august and profound doctrines of our Christian faith, and the wonders of redemption, and you will recoil from the disfigurating and nauseating trivialities of petty gessip and the banalities of social scandal. Above all, remember that whilst words are sacred things and God holds us responsible for their use or abuse’,

we must not only guard “the words of our mouth” but “th© meditations of our heart.” Evil speaking is the fruit of evil thinking, and evil thinking is to be cast out only by a new spirit, even the love that “thinketh no evil.” God desireth “truth in the inward parts,” truth in speech, in thought, in action, in Ife. To whom then shall we turn for help but to Christ, Who is the Truth of God Incarnate and Who has the words of eternal life.

Note.—The above is the 200th sermon which htaa been published in the Daily News during the last four years. Th© preacher wishes to thank readers near and far, who have expressed appreciation of these weekly messages.A.HXL