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Preach-the-Gospel.com |
A. B. Simpson
A sanctified tongue
A sanctified body is known, as physical
health is known, by the appearance of the tongue. Your physician asks
to see your tongue when he calls, and there is no surer test of a sanctified
body than the condition of its tongue. A sanctified tongue is a true tongue.
It is cleansed from every form of falsehood, equivocation, deception,
and lying, whether it be the daring perjury of the criminal, or the polite
prevarication of fashionable society. Along with this it has also abandoned
profanity in every form, the oath of the blasphemer or the polite jest
that plays and puns on sacred things and makes light of the holy and the
divine. It is a tongue that is free from folly and frivolity. It does
not shrink from the spirit of genial and innocent humor when it is controlled
by sense and kindness, but it has repudiated foolish talking which is
not convenient, and seeks, in everything, to speak in the sight of God
as the instrument of His thought and will. And, above all other forms
of abuse of the tongue, it has put away evil speaking, the abominable
gossip of society, the habit of repeating all that one hears, and especially
the evil that affects another. It dare not give publicity to an unkind
report or an unfavorable whisper respecting another’s character, or even
utter that which it knows to be false, unless under the stern necessity
of protecting another’s soul from danger, and then only when it has first
spoken freely and plainly to the offending one directly. A sanctified
tongue is also cleansed from all needless speaking. It has learned the
golden habit of stillness and finds its greatest blessing in its own supression
and habit of silence and communion with God.
