ion, and spirituality--words,
words, words--nay, let us have _realities_.

It is well known that Luther complained of this epistle, that it did
not contain the Gospel; for men who are hampered by a system will
say--even of an inspired Apostle--that he does not teach the Gospel if
their own favourite doctrine be not the central subject of his
discourse; but St. James's reply seems spontaneously to suggest itself
to us. The Gospel! how can we speak of the Gospel, when the first
principles of _morality_ are forgotten? when Christians are excusing
themselves, and slandering one another? How can the superstructure of
Love and Faith be built, when the very foundations of human
character--Justice, Mercy, Truth--have not been laid?

1st. The license of the tongue.
2nd. The guilt of that license.

The first license given to the tongue is slander. I am not of course,
speaking now of that species of slander against which the law of libel
provides a remedy, but of that of which the Gospel alone takes
cognisance; for the worst injuries which man can do to man, are
precisely those which are too delicate for _law_ to deal with. We
consider therefore not the calumny which is reckoned such by the
moralities of an earthly court, but that which is found guilty by the
spiritualities of the courts of heaven--that is, the mind of God.

Now observe, this slander is compared in the text to poison--"the
tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The deadliest
poisons are those for which no test is known: there are poisons so
destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces
death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that
virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of
poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there!"

In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest
insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the
quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot
distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood,
irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into
restless misery.

In St. James's day, as now, it would appear that there were idle men
and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander
as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect
the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the s