of; it is persons, flesh and blood, men and women with human feelings, and whose human feelings we can reach and touch and sting. Then, it is not strangers we speak against, persons we have only heard of remotely; it is men and women we have met and known and been familiar with, whose secrets, perhaps, we have known, and who may have laid themselves open by some blunder or crime to our speaking evil against them. Then, they must have thwarted us, come across us in some way, taken some prize we had set our hearts upon, gained reputation or affections or position we had lost. To sum up, the object of evil-speaking is a person, well-known to us, who has thwarted us, against whom we have a grudge, which comes out in this way.

Necessary limitations in

defining evil-speaking

It will appear why the object against which evil-speaking is thus limited and defined. It is necessary to put aside, on the one hand, its essentially malignant forms, such as do not call for Christian discussion, because not found among Christians, Satanic evil-speaking for example, for surely it is not to transgress against the charity of the Gospel, to say that he is of his father the devil who could wilfully, maliciously, circulate a falsehood regarding his fellow-man,—-such a falsehood as the Pharisees were guilty of when they said to the people, concerning the wonderful works of our Lord, that He did them through the help of Satan. This kind of evil-speaking is to be put aside, on the one hand, and, on the other, as perhaps scarcely coming under the name, though it often leads to as much mischief as if it did, that insatiable appetite for making one's neighbour's affairs the staple of what is supposed to be conversation, which so greatly afflicts many people, and which, in another sense, so much more greatly afflicts those who are so unfortunate to be subjected to it. Our neighbours are very interesting to us, and so are their affairs, and of course the only way we can show our interest in them is by talking about them. We do not know everything about them, and some of the things we think we know about them we do not know at all, but we talk as if we did, and in the multitude of words there is pretty sure to be sin and wrong and injustice somewhere; and so it comes, that though we have no feeling of

any kind against them, our too much talk about them often does them as much harm as if we had set ourselves to do it. Still, this is to be excluded from what we call evil-speaking; it is wanting in that element of conscious grudge or malice which, it appears, is the essential element of evil-speaking. There is thoughtlessness, gross, sinful thoughtlessness; there is a cruel disregard of what may possibly be the result, as it affects the reputation and welfare of others; but so long as there is not the wilful, deliberate intention to injure by our speaking, our talk can scarcely be called evil-speaking. Out of the heart proceedeth evil-speakings, and the heart means the affections, and the intentions, and the motives, and our speaking is what our motive makes it evil, if our motive is evil.

Various forms of it.

Evil-speaking then is to be confined to that form of maliciousness which, for the lurking purpose of doing an injury to its object, takes up and spreads an evil report. It may be sometimes by simply repeating what is really the truth concerning him; sometimes by exaggerating; sometimes by professing great regrets that so and so had been so far left to himself to do as he has unfortunately done, but it must not be mentioned, it is strictly confidential; sometimes by leaving out part of the story, which had it been told would have given a very different colour to the whole affair; sometimes by so arranging the truth as to make it do the work of a lie. But whatever be the form it takes, it consists of, and carries with it, more or less of the ill-will that takes up, and passes on, an illreport against a neighbour or a brother.

Evil-speaking

Now, says the apostle, he that does this, he that speaketh against a brother, or judgeth a brother, speaketh against the law and judgeth the law. Observe, you cannot speak against him without judging him; at the foundation of every law-judging. such speaking against there is a judgment: you have decided that he deserves that you should speak against him, and that he should suffer all that may come upon him as the result of your speaking against him. This is your judgment concerning his character and his deserts. Imagine anybody saying something evil of a neighbour without judging that neigh

bour to deserve it should be said and all the evil consequences that are sure to follow! It is often done! That does not make it any the less irrational, though it may make it slightly the less wicked. If I say an ill thing of my neighbour, I judge him,-I judge him to be deserving of having it said, and of deserving to suffer all he shall suffer by its having been said.

It is possible to conceive a man, under the influence of a bitter, unforgiving grudge, assenting to all this, but it must surely be only when he is in such an unchristian, inhuman condition. Get him to confront this aggravation of his sin, this which surely even he must be blind to, that he is speaking against the law and judging the law; that he is distinctly challenging the character, the holiness, and the love of God's law; that he is judging it as a thing that is worthy to be condemned. A man would speak against his brother who would think twice before doing it if he just realised that he was speaking against and judging God's law. But a moment's reflection will show that it is so. The law is love, the spirit of it is love, the requirements of it are love. Well, if I am right in speaking against my brother (and I am right, else I would not do it), then I do not need to be very respectful to that law which contradicts what I am doing, I may say of it what I like, I do say of it what I like: it says, "love thy neighbour"; I speak against him and, therefore, against it. Or we may take it this way: The law of God is far too strict; if too strict, sinfully strict; it condemns what I do not condemn, what I approve of, this speaking against my brother for example. If I do not approve of it, why do I persist in doing it? But if I approve of it, then I judge and condemn what does not approve of it. But the law of God does not approve of it, abhors it, condemns it, punishes it; well then I judge and condemn the law of God, and I regard it as unnecessarily punctilious in abhorring, and sinfully unjust in punishing. If I think it right to speak against a brother, I think the law of God is not what it ought to be: every time I speak against a brother I speak against God's law, I condemn God's law.

There is something far darker still. If thou judge the law, thou hast lifted thyself above the law, thou hast usurped the

Evil-speaking Goddethroning.

throne of Him who gave the law; if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. Is it not so? If you decide that your neighbour deserves to have that story, true or false, told about him, and that he deserves to suffer all he shall suffer by its being told, are you not assuming the place of a judge? No wonder the apostle breaks off in indignant rebuke, "One is the Lawgiver and Judge who is able to save or to destroy, but then who art thou that judgest thy brother?"

The Game of
Tradition.

Archbishop Whately invented what he called the "Game of Tradition." Ten or twelve people, old and young, seated round a room, play the game. "A story is whispered at one end of the circle and passed round to the other. A tells it softly in the ear of B; B communicates it to C; C to D; and so it goes on till it reaches Z, who tells it aloud for A to hear. It is then found that the story in the process of transit has so changed colour and features that A cannot recognise it."

Exemplified

in speaking

In a thoughtless moment, without any ill intent, just to take part in the conversation, or to show how cleverly we could tell a story, we repeated one we had just heard about, of one who was well known to everybody present. There was no need to tell it, it would have been kind to let it lie forgotten, but we had just recently heard it, nobody knew it but ourselves, and it would give us a little brief pre-eminence to against. tell it, and we told it with a kind of a sense of selfcondemnation, but we did not mean any harm, we did not think of any injury as likely to follow, if we had we would not have told it.* Some who heard it told it over again; those who heard it repeated it in their turn, till one day, after it had hurt the reputation and lacerated the feelings of him we told it about, having heard somehow that we had had a hand in it, he one day came to us and asked if we had said so-and-so about him. We had forgotten all about it, the story as we heard it now from his lips was one we had never heard before, far less had told it about

Henry Holbeach, Vol. 1, p. 133.

W

him: we were indignantly denying it when we remembered:"Aye, and was this vile, calumnious thing the outcome of our thoughtless vanity that only wanted to tell a story well." Set a little stone rolling at the top of yon hill and it will kill the man at its foot. Tell the story to A, and when it comes to the Z-end it will be recited in the midst of murdered reputations and broken hearts. Let us speak not evil one of another: the end of these things may be death.

GLASGOW.

PETER RUTHERFORD.

SECTARIANISM.—" Every Christian sect has tried to realise the kingdom of God, but has failed. Every Christian sect, denomination, nation, represents, after all, only one side of Christianity. The High Church represents the feelings of the Christian heart; the Broad Church represents the breadth of liberal Christian thought; the Low Church, or Evangelical, represents that strong and firm faith which will not be satisfied till its cherished dogmas are brought to those nations who are in want of it; and the extremely philosophical school amongst Christians represents that side of Christianity which harmonises with metaphysical and scientific truth. Thus each section of Christ's Church represents a truth. . . . My object is not to become a convert to any of the sects in England; for if I hate idolatry, I also hate sectarianism. If I belong to one sect I become an enemy to another sect; if I identify myself with the rich I become an enemy to the poor; if I become the exclusive property, as it were, of one religious denomination, I shall necessarily become hostile to all other churches and sects. Christians ought to be satisfied with the name 'Christian' if they wish to show that they are grateful to Jesus Christ for the light He communicated to them, and they should drop off all those distinctive titles which distinguish the various sects from each other. . . . I cannot but feel perplexed, and even amazed, amidst countless and quarrelling sects."-Keshab Chandra Sen.