SERMON XL. ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.
ON THE VICE OF SPEAKING IMMODESTLY.
"He touched his tongue, .... and the string of his tongue was loosed." MARK vii. 33, 35.
IN this day’s gospel St. Mark relates the miracle which our Saviour wrought in healing the man that was dumb by barely touching his tongue. "He touched his tongue and the string of his tongue was loosed." From. the last words we may infer that the man was not entirely dumb, but that his tongue was not free, or that his articulation was not distinct. Hence St. Mark tells us, that after the miracle he spoke right. Let us make the application to ourselves. The dumb man stood in need of a miracle to loose his tongue, and to take away the impediment under which he laboured. But how many are there on whom God would confer a great grace, if he bound their tongues, that they might cease to speak immodestly! This vice does great injury to others. Secondly, it does great injury to themselves. These shall be the two points of this sermon.
First Point. The man who speaks immodestly does great injury to others who listen to him.
1. In explaining the 140th Psalm, St. Augustine calls those who speak obscenely “the mediators of Satan," the ministers of Lucifer; because, by their obscene language, the demon of impurity gets access to souls, which by his own suggestions he could not enter. Of their accursed tongues St. James says: "And the tongue is a fire,... being set on fire by hell." (James iii. 6.) He says that the tongue is a fire kindled by hell, with which they who speak obscenely burn themselves and others. The obscene tongue may be said to be the tongue of the third person, of which Ecclesiasticus says: ” The tongue of a third person hath disquieted many, and scattered them from nation to nation." (Eccl.
