by the eye of living man, until the times of restitution of all things;' but the sight of Him was to be left to the exercise of imagination and of faith. And this, my brethren, is the condition under which we now live. The session of Christ at the right hand of God is a glorious truth, which the Church confesses in each of her three creeds; and faithful members of the Church will associate with this truth the remembrance of the fact that the same power which He possessed on earth, of knowing the thoughts and hearing the words of men when absent from them in the body, He possesses still. And, surely, this consideration (over and above the general doctrine of God's omnipresence and omniscience, which, if not more difficult to realise, is certainly more impalpable)-the consideration, I say, that Jesus, our Saviour, knows what we think, and hears what we speak-may, and ought to be made of use to us for purposes the most practical and the most important. I will mention two of these. It should serve as a check to restrain us from evil; and it should act as an encouragement to incite us to what is good. 1. To speak first of the former. Our poet of 1 See Acts vii. 56; ix. 17, 27; xxii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 8; Acts xxii. 17, 18; 2 Cor. xii. 4; Rev. i. 13, 17, 18; Acts iii. 21. the Christian Year' brings the matter before us, where he writes, upon the Second Sunday in Advent : The season's flight, unwarned, we mark; Yet is He near; beneath our eaves Hush, idle words, and thoughts of ill; Till in thine altered voice be known When the poet here complains that we Miss the Judge behind the door, 6 'for all the light'—that is, notwithstanding all the light of sacred lore,' he refers to that text of S. James (v. 9), Behold, the Judge standeth before the door.' And his reference to that Epistle is the more appropriate because there is no portion of Holy Scripture which furnishes us with more or stricter warnings for the government of the tongue, while, at the same time, it suggests the most constraining motive for such government, in the fact that Christ overhears all we say, no less than if He were actually standing and listening at the door. Thus the Epistle begins by laying down, in the first chapter, the broad statement in regard to the necessity of self-control in this respect a statement which presses upon all Christians alike, in every station and condition of life: If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue . . . this man's religion is vain.' Next, universally binding and indispensably necessary as this duty is, S. James does not attempt to disguise the difficulty which is to be encountered in our endeavours to perform it. On the contrary, he assures us (iii. 2), 'If any man offend not1 in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.' And then he proceeds to describe at length the evils that must arise if this duty be neglected. The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members that it defileth the whole body.' Again, in the fourth chapter (verse 11) comes the general admonition not to employ our tongues to the injury of our neighbour. Speak not evil one of another, brethren; he that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law and judgeth the law:' that is, he assumes the law, and the Divine administration of it, to be faulty or defective, when, without any call from God, or commission from man, he takes upon himself to ascend the tribunal and to act as judge. Lastly, in the fifth and last chapter, as if to intimate more plainly that by rash and unkind censure we invade the Judge's office, and that, too, in the very presence and in the hearing of the Judge Himself, he writes : (verse 9) grudge not (or rather murmur not') one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned. Behold, the Judge standeth before the door.' And who is this Judge? He is, my brethren, the same who, whether the doors were open or shut, passed through them, after His resurrection, with equal ease; who, whether absent or present, knew and heard what was said with equal certainty. He is the same who warned us so solemnly not to say to our brother Raca' or Thou fool; 2 and who assured us, no less solemnly, that every idle [that is, every worthless or bad] word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment' (Matt. xii. 36). And there was a time, in the days of old, as Tertullian testifies, when Christians bore these things in mind, so that it became one of the chief characteristics whereby they were distinguished from the heathen: 2 Matt. v. 22. 6 1 So R.V. Gr. μὴ στενάζετε, 2 'Ita fabulantur, ut qui sciant Dominum audire '1 --(They talk as men who know that their Lord is hearing them). Doubtless they did so, because they argued with themselves in some such manner as this: If the tongue be "the best member that we have" (Ps. cviii. 1); if by the power and prerogative of speech man is distinguished from the inferior creatures of God's hand, if there is no good and noble purpose which, when duly cultivated and improved, it may not be made to serve; if truth and wisdom, love and joy, peace and consolation hang upon the tongue; if it was designed to be the instrument of praise to God, and of blessing to our fellow-men, then woe above all to us if we abuse that which is best to the worst of purposes; if we employ this glorious faculty to injure man or to dishonour God-to utter words of profaneness or of impurity, of hatred or of maliciousness, of dishonesty or of untruth, words by which evil is fermented, and over which Satan rejoices, but the Holy Angels weep. And if He who is to judge us has been listening to these words, how can we hope they have escaped His notice, or will escape, if unrepented of, the condemnation they have provoked ?' Tertull., Apol. c. 39, quoted in Christian Year. 2 So Prayer Book version; in Bible, with my glory.' |