Entry 55

The Larger Catechism, in discussing this commandment, calls special attention to unseasonable speech or loquacity, tale-bearing, backbiting, detraction, aggravating small faults, discovering infirmities, impairing our neighbour’s credit, and rejoicing in their disgrace and infamy. The whole analysis is a terrible indictment laid against the tongue of sinful man.

A loquacious man is one who speaks much, and the preacher says that “in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.” True, a multitude of words is not necessarily of itself a sin. A multitude of words is more a matter of temperament and constitution than of morals or religion. But then, mankind being what they are, a talkative tongue becomes to many a temptation and a snare. Were all men’s minds full of wisdom and knowledge, then a full and free utterance would cause no injury; but a talkative tongue, rooted in a selfish, corrupt, unloving heart, cannot but utter much folly and sin. Butler points out that loquacity springs from “that original disease of the mind, an eager desire to engage attention.” In his sermon On the Government of the Tongue, this great ethical writer points out that one of the main mischiefs of a loquacious habit of speech is this, that the necessity to be always talking tends to produce tale-bearing.

The strong idiomatic word backbiting is full of expressiveness. This word brings out strongly the meanness, the cowardice, and the treachery of the conduct it condemns. Pascal says that if everybody knew what one says about another behind his back, there would not be four friends in the whole world. Detraction, “envy’s abhorred child,” is a very common kind of backbiting. The etymology here also is very expressive and instructive. Detraction is literally to draw away something from some one, and in this case it is to draw away some praise, or honour, or esteem from the good name of an absent man. Butler warns us that the “giving of characters” makes up too much of our conversation. And no doubt it is so, since depreciation of our neighbour’s merits is so pleasant to us. There are many men of whom it may be said without much exaggeration, “At every word a reputation dies.”

“Party feeling, whether called religious zeal, or national antagonism, or political creed, becomes simple malice, and is simply devilish when it leads us not only to condemn opponents, but to wish that they may be really as unworthy as history or rumour makes them, to court and hug and blaze abroad every tittle of evidence which tells against them, and to turn a dull ear to everything which tells in their favour. Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (Christina Rossetti).

This evil spirit poisons much of our spoken and printed criticism and polemic. Dr. William Cunningham was one of the ablest theological and polemical writers that our Church and country has ever seen, and he did much to expound and establish evangelical truth, and to chastise its opponents, but he never wrote a nobler passage than that in which he introduced a second castigation of Sir William Hamilton, who had died immediately after the publication of a most powerful and unanswerable paper against him. “The knowledge,” Dr. Cunningham wrote, “if we had possessed it, that he was to die so soon, would assuredly have modified somewhat the tone in which the discussion was conducted,—would have shut out something of its lightness and severity, and imparted to it more of solemnity and tenderness; and the knowledge which we did possess, that he, as well as ourselves, was liable every day to be called out of this world, and summoned into God’s presence, ought to have produced this result.”

Uses

1. “Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth; he shuns saying it to others: and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart” (Pascal).

2. “What is almost all conversation almost everywhere, but a breach of the law of love? Word follows word, chasing one another, sweeping over one another, like wave on wave; and what remains in the memory? How few call themselves really, evening by evening, to any account! It were not too much to say of most men, that they are ‘curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own’” (Pusey).

3. Eschew as much as possible the “giving of characters.”

4. Garrulous Plutarch winds up his essay on Garrulity with these words: “Before we speak, and at the very moment when the words are ready to break out of our mouths, we should thus address ourselves, What is this which I would say? What is this which presses so hard to be uttered? For what reason would this tongue of mine so fain be talking? What mischief shall I incur by holding my peace? We ought always to bear in remembrance, and have at our tongue’s end, that saying of the philosopher that he had often repented him of talking, but never once of keeping silence.”

5. Augustine tells us in his Confessions how much his mother abhorred everything like slander, and the fruit of her counsels and example on her great son was, that long after her death, he caused these lines to be carved on the table at which his guests sat:

   “He that is wont to slander absent men,
   May never at this table sit again”

6. “Judge not without knowledge, charity, or necessity; yet a dog is to be accounted a dog, and a swine a swine” (Bengel).

Questions

1. Derive and illustrate the following words, all of which describe breaches of the ninth commandment:—Misconstruction, Misrepresentation, Exaggeration, Detraction, Defamation, Insinuation, Prejudice.

2. Explain Pope’s line:

   At every word a reputation dies.

3. Commit the verse:

   If wisdom’s ways you wisely seek,
   Five things observe with care;
   Of whom you speak, to whom you speak,
   And how, and when, and where.

4. Q. What is the first inference from thence?—A. That the best Christians have cause to be humbled for sins of the tongue, whereby God is dishonoured, and others are injured (Jas. iii.). Q. What is the next inference?—A. To bless God that our names are kept sweet and honourable in the world among good men (3 John 12).

5. Read Butler’s sermon Upon the Government of the Tongue; also Matthew Henry’s description of the citizen of Zion (Ps. xv. 3).