FOR every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind; but”—(James 3:7, 87For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: 8But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:7‑8).)
We’ll not finish the last sentence just now, but go off to a menagerie first and take a look at beasts and birds and creeping things. And we won’t have to walk very far to find a great big zoological garden. It has two big black gates and a fence around it, and we call it The Bible! Did you ever think what a great lot of interesting animals and birds we can find in its pages?
There are lions there—one that David killed when it attacked his sheep; another that Benaiah, one of David’s soldiers, followed down into a pit on a snowy day in winter; a lot of them in the den where they put brave Daniel. There are bears in it, the bear David killed, and the bears that ate up the small boys who called Elisha names. There is a leopard over in the Book of Jeremiah who cannot change his spots; and there are the foxes that Samson treated so cruelly when he tied firebrands to their tails. There are monkeys here which King Solomon’s ships brought to him with peacocks, and many other things. In the Book of Job there are a hippopotamus and a crocodile; you may not recognize them because they are called behemoth and leviathan. There is a serpent in the first part of Genesis, and a deaf adder that the charmer cannot charm in one of the Psalms; there is an ostrich over in the Book of Job that lays her eggs in the sand, and there are camels in Genesis, and many other books.
Now, which do you think of them all is the hardest to tame? Is it the lion which Agur calls “strongest among beasts,” or the hippopotamus, or the leopard, or one of the snakes? I don’t think we’ve seen the most untamable animal in the Bible yet. It is kept behind white ivory bars, and there are two red doors in front of them to shut and keep the animal from being heard when he ought not to. When it is feeling well this animal is bright red, and it grows much paler when it is sick. You can see him any day for yourself by standing in front of a mirror and opening the doors and bars. You’ve guessed him now: “The tongue can no man, tame!”
And why do you suppose the Bible thinks it the most untamable beast? Leopards have sharp teeth and can bite; but the Bible says that some people’s tongues are sharper than a razor! Snakes can poison, but so can some tongues that whisper bad things in our ears. A crocodile can lash with his horny tail; but Eliphaz speaks to Job of the “scourge of the tongue.” Ostriches can run very fast and it would be hard to catch one of them; but a Psalmist says of some people he has known: “Their tongue walketh through the earth.”
“How absurd!” you say; “tongues can’t walk; they have no legs.”
Well, you tell something you hope no one will repeat and see whether it does not seem that the tongues of those who heard you have legs to walk and run. . . . There is some One who can tame the tongue, and make it say just what He wishes, and He wants you to: “confess (Him) with your mouth” (that is the tongue doing what He wishes), and “believe in your heart . . . and thou shalt be saved.”
ML 11/12/1916