one time
damaged or defrauded'? Can any old creditor's widow or orphan stand up
for our doctrine and defend our discipline pointing to you? If you go on
to be a Puritan, said Shame to Faithful, you will have to ask your
neighbour's forgiveness even for petty faults, and you will have to make
restitution with usury where you have taken anything from any one, and
how will you like that?

And what did you say to all this, my brother? Say? I could not tell
what to say at the first. I felt my blood coming up into my face at some
of the things that Shame said and threatened. But, at last, I began to
consider that that which is highly esteemed among men is often had in
abomination with God. And I said to myself again, Shame tells me what
men do and what men think, but he has told me nothing about what He
thinks with Whom I shall soon have alone to do. Therefore, thought I,
what God thinks and says is wisest and best, let all the men of the world
say what they will. Let all false shame, then, depart from my heart, for
how else shall I look upon my Lord, and how shall He look upon me at His
coming?

TALKATIVE

'A man full of talk.'--Zophar.

'Let thy words be few.'--The Preacher.

'The soul of religion is the practick part.'--Christian.

Since we all have a tongue, and since so much of our time is taken up
with talk, a simple catalogue of the sins of the tongue is enough to
terrify us. The sins of the tongue take up a much larger space in the
Bible than we would believe till we have begun to suffer from other men's
tongues and especially from our own. The Bible speaks a great deal more
and a great deal plainer about the sins of the tongue than any of our
pulpits dare to do. In the Psalms alone you would think that the
psalmists scarcely suffer from anything else worth speaking about but the
evil tongues of their friends and of their enemies. The Book of Proverbs
also is full of the same lashing scourge. And James the Just, in a
passage of terrible truth and power, tells us that we are already as good
as perfect men if we can bridle our tongue; and that, on the other hand,
if we do not bridle our tongue, all our seeming to be religious is a sham
and a self-deception,--that man's religion is vain.

With many men and many women great talkativeness is a matter of simple
temperament and mental constitution. And a talkative habit would be a
childlike and an innocent habit if the heart of talker