, the behaviour, and the deserts of our neighbours.

Now, it was all those vices of the tongue in full outbreak in the day of
James the Just that made that apostle, half in sorrow, half in anger,
demand of all his readers that they should henceforth begin to bridle
their tongues. And, like all that most practical apostle's counsels,
that is a most impressive and memorable commandment. For, it is well
known that all sane men who either ride on or drive unruly horses, take
good care to bridle their horses well before they bring them out of their
stable door. And then they keep their bridle-hand firm closed on the
bridle-rein till their horses are back in the stable again. Especially
and particularly they keep a close eye and a firm hand on their horse's
bridle on all steep inclines and at all sharp angles and sudden turns in
the road; when sudden trains are passing and when stray dogs are barking.
If the rider or the driver of a horse did not look at nothing else but
the bridle of his horse, both he and his horse under him would soon be in
the ditch,--as so many of us are at the present moment because we have an
untamed tongue in our mouth on which we have not yet begun to put the
bridle of truth and justice and brotherly love. Indeed, such woe and
misery has an untamed tongue wrought in other churches and in other and
more serious ages than ours, that special religious brotherhoods have
been banded together just on the special and strict engagement that they
would above all things put a bridle on their tongues. 'What are the
chief cares of a young convert?' asked such a convert at an aged
Carthusian. 'I said I will take heed to my ways that I trespass not with
my tongue,' replied the saintly father. 'Say no more for the present,'
interrupted the youthful beginner; 'I will go home and practise that, and
will come again when I have performed it.'

Now, whatever faults that tall man had who took up so much of Faithful's
time and attention, he was a saint compared with the men and the women
who have just passed before us. Talkative, as John Bunyan so scornfully
names that tall man, though he undoubtedly takes up too much time and too
much space in Bunyan's book, was not a busybody in other men's matters at
any rate. Nobody could call him a detractor or a backbiter or a
talebearer or a liar. Christian knew him well, and had known him long,
but Christian was not afraid to leave him alone with Faithful. We all
know