death-blow to his own worldly prospects by a gratuitous exposure of his own folly or shame. An enemy, sometimes a powerful enemy, may be made by what would seem a trifling word; and a friend, on the contrary, may be made by an observation that might by the speaker himself be regarded as trivial and insignificant. The attention of others may often be alive to what we say, when we are little disposed to suspect it. None of us can safely venture to calculate what may be the effect of a word on our future fortunes. Joseph tells his dreams to his envious brothers; and first we see him dragged into Egypt a miserable bondslave, and then we see him all but seated upon Egypt's throne. The more we examine the workings of society, and lay bare the springs of human action, the more we shall be convinced that, considered in its influence upon our present condition, the sentiment of Solomon is literally accurate, and that "death and life are in the power of the tongue."

But we do not part with it upon these terms. It would be but small praise of

any passage of the inspired word to say of it that it conveyed a valuable rule of human prudence, if we were to stop short there, and not go on to say that, like all Scripture, it is “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." I have yet to notice its superior sense, and to show how, in respect to the future, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." And here, my brethren, it must be quite unnecessary to enter into detail to convince you of the fact that spiritual death is the frequent and melancholy effect of the impious efforts of some men's tongues. The Apostle has sanctified the maxim of the heathen poet, that "evil communications corrupt good manners." And when we think of the terrible ravages of infidels and heretics, who have for the most part laboured with perverse activity to circulate and perpetuate their souldestroying errors, when we think of the horrible successes of those who have in various ages exerted themselves to relax morality, and to ruin or corrupt the faith, we have striking proof of the fact that

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"death" at least "is in the power of the tongue." There are such men ever at work; Satan is never destitute of labourers. We are ourselves witnesses of the melancholy process. There are agents of ill about in the land, seeking whom they may devour, endeavouring to produce a general scepticism, and to inculcate doctrines subversive not only of morality, but of society itself. I need not call upon you to become in imagination spectators of the ruin of Korah and his company; I need not invite you to look upon the wretched Jews, incited by the persuasions of the chief priests and scribes, to reject and crucify the Lord of life and glory, and bringing down upon themselves the ruin of their place and nation. It is likely we most of us are acquainted with instances in which the efforts of evil men and deceivers have brought some we know into the snare of the devil, by leading them to make shipwreck of the faith, or to give themselves to unbridled profligacy.

But life too is in the power of the tongue. If there are those who speak words that

kill the soul, there are those who, by God's blessing resting upon what they say, are the happy means of awakening others to the spiritual life. The cause of God has never been without its noble band of witnesses; and since the command went forth, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," there has never failed, in the lands that have received Christianity, a succession of men, set apart by those who have authority in the Church, for the especial purpose of teaching the truth. Sometimes they may have mixed much human error with the heavendescended doctrine, but we must remember with gratitude that they always held the head, and built upon the foundation. Sometimes their lives may have been but ill in keeping with their teaching, but the purity and preciousness of the truth cannot be impaired by the vileness of him who preaches it. When we think of the value of the Gospel, when we reflect on what it does for man, that it proclaims a doctrine which, if received by faith, saves the sinner from the curse of the law and the power

of sin, and enables him to live in the love of God and man, and in the blessed hope of everlasting life; when we think that the conversion of the sinner is often, very often, effected by the means of preaching, and that preaching, and other verbal instruction, may be regarded as the chief means of edification and comfort to the Church, we must see a striking correctness in the assertion of the proverb, that life, yea, eternal" life, is in the power of the tongue."

But here too we must descend from particular instances, and not allow ourselves to suppose for a moment that though the sentiment of the text may apply with an accuracy that cannot be doubted to the miserable efforts of the sophist, and to the sacred labours of the minister of the Gospel, yet it cannot, with any thing like equal accuracy, be applied to all. It does, strictly and literally, in this sense apply to all. Every one of us, from the highest to the lowest, has spiritual "death and life in the power of his tongue." Every word he speaks, we do not say has an effect upon