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Mind Your Words and Conduct

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Samuel Smith
5

MIND YOUR WORDS AND CONDUCT

"GIVE NONE OFFENCE, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God" (1 Corinthians 10:32; Emphasis Supplied).

My dear Brother or Sister in Christ, bear with me as I tell a true story which has made a deep impression upon my mind at this end of the world. A great preacher in a town was once sent for by A DYING MAN. On entering the room, he saw one whose face he did not recognize. "You do not remember me," said the dying man. The pastor confessed that he did not. "Well," said the man, "I heard of you as a famous preacher some years ago, and I resolved to go to your church and judge for myself. I went, and was exceedingly struck by your sermon. It produced a powerful effect on my conscience. I never rested until I got an opportunity of being in your company. I desired to have some communion with one whose sermon had so much impressed me. I met you at a house where many others were assembled, and hoped to derive some good from your society. But, to my surprise, you hardly ever spoke of God, or Christ, or the Bible, or the soul, or eternal things, all that night long. You LAUGHED. You JOKED. You TOLD GOOD STORIES. You were very COURTEOUS. You were very AGREEABLE. But you were not like the preacher I had heard. I went away convinced that YOU DID NOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU PREACHED, and that Christianity was all a delusion. I shook off my feelings. I hardened my conscience. I went back to the world. And now I have sent for you to say that I have lost my soul!"

The apostle James, in the third chapter of his epistle, calls THE TONGUE "a fire, a world of iniquity, an unruly evil full of deadly poison." He says, that "no man can tame" it (James 3:6 - 8). The Lord Jesus tells us that "for EVERY IDLE WORD MEN SPEAK they shall give account in the day of judgment" - and that "by our words we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned" (Matthew 12:36 - 37). By CONVERSATION and SPEECH, sin first came into the world. It began through the passage of words between Satan and Eve (Genesis 3:1 - 6). By THE TONGUE the Gospel was first proclaimed to the world. It was preached by men, and heard long before it was read. Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21). Take heed to your ways at this end of the world. Be doubly watchful OVER YOUR TONGUE, and doubly careful not to injure the cause you have to defend, by erring in word. In WORD, as well as in DEED, strive to be an example! He that hath ears to hear, let him hear (Matthew 11:15).

Paul Fonsi