The deceitful tongue.
"Lips are soft; but when they are lying lips they suck away the life of character, and are as murderous as razors. Lips should never be red with the blood of honest men's reputes, nor salved with malicious falsehoods. Some seem to lie for lying's sake, it is their sport and spirit. The faculty of speech becomes a curse when it is degraded into a mean weapon for smiting men behind their backs. Those who fawn and flatter, and all the while have enmity in their hearts, are wicked beings; they are the seed of the devil, and he worketh in them after his own deceptive nature." "Ungodly men will do mischief to other men purely for mischief's sake; yet when once mischief is done it proves most mischievous to the doers of it; and while they hold their brethren's heaviness a profit, though they are never the Better, they shall feel and find themselves in a short time much the worse" (Caryl).
I. THE TONGUE IS SHARPER THAN AN ARROW.
1. It is shot in private.
2. It is tipped with poison.
3. It is polished with seeming kindness.
4. It is aimed at the tenderest part.
II. THE TONGUE IS MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN FIRE.
1. Its scandals spread with greater rapidity.
2. They consume that which other fires cannot touch.
3. They are less easily quenched.
"The tongue," says an apostle, "is a fire … and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." A fiery dart of the wicked one. (Outline by George Rogers.)—R.T.