Colossians 4:6 Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man. I. BY SPEECH WITH GRACE the apostle does not mean what is so often miscalled religious conversation. This is good in fit time and place, and to proper persons. But it is distasteful and injurious when obtruded unseasonably; worthless when it runs into perplexing technicalities; offensive when it degenerates into unmeaning cant; mischievous when it feeds the habit of morbid introspection. But there is a grace which, blending with speech, on all sorts of subjects and occasions, may make the whole intercourse of life religious. Our Saviour at Bethany would not talk with His friends only on God and heaven, but about their earthly concerns and friends; yet there was that in all His words which indicated Him as the Holy One of God. The traits of grace which should mark the conversations of Christians are — 1. Truth. The Christian has, of course, put away lying; yet there are excellent persons who are careless as to exact and literal truth, on whose lips a surmise takes the place of a fact, and who, while they would not for their right hand make a lie for themselves, are not equally scrupulous about lies made by others, or those which grow from tongue to tongue. Yet there is no deviation from truth which may not either do mischief to others, or reflect on him who gives it currency. How few confine themselves to what they know 1 There are so many things outside this limit which give zest to social intercourse; while literal speech is so jejune and dull. Yet speech thus weighed may save from fearful complicity in evil. 2. Sincerity — (1) in the expression of opinions. On many subjects on which the clear utterance of all who think soberly would be as efficient in demolishing the wrong and establishing the right as Joshua's trumpet blast, good men pause to listen when they ought to speak, or speak ambiguously so that their words may seem to favour the winning side. Hence public opinion on subjects of prime importance is manufactured by those interested in the wrong. No moral force is so mighty as outspoken Christian opinion. It is a trust, therefore, for the common good, and should be used — (2) In the expression of feeling. Silence or sincerity should be the alternative. Bad feeling ought not to be uttered, but while it rankles in the heart it ought not to be forced into hypocritical utterance. Let, the artifice which gives truth-like expression to the proper feelings we do not feel be exchanged into the endeavour to suppress in our hearts all we should blush to utter. But every genuine emotion demands and merits unconstrained expression. Admiration, enthusiasm, love of beauty, all kindly sympathies, by natural and hearty utterance gain strength, and bless those who speak and those who hear; while he who keeps right feelings under a perpetual restraint becomes the cold and passionless clod he tries to seem. 3. Kindness. (1) The tongue is the chief instrument of and hindrance to charity. What is charity without it? It is only the very abject that can enjoy mere alms, and what is coldly or chidingly given starves and chills the soul while it feeds and warms the body: whereas there are words which bless even the poor more than gifts, by imparting inspiration and awakening hope. (2) In ordinary social life, too, kind speech is demanded beyond all other forms of kindness. More unhappiness is caused through unkind speech than through all else combined. What beneficent agency can be compared with that of him or her in whose ears all scandal lies buried, and whose lips are hollowed for gentle ministries of encouragement and refinement. (3) It is not enough that we pull up all roots of bitterness from the heart. There is not a little of unkind speech that is not meant to be so. The fibres of human feeling are tremulously sensitive to our unskilled touch. 4. Modesty. "In honour preferring one another" is a rule for conversation. The opinionativeness which always knows it is right and everybody else wrong; self-assertion, the ambition for effect barely tolerable in genius are disgusting in mediocrity. Mutual instruction and entertainment are the chief uses of conversation, and these ends are defeated when one assumes as his the right to be an oracle. 5. Reverence. When the tone of reverence is low, there is a vicious tendency to introduce sacred things to give raciness to an anecdote, or to point a jest. But when the natural track of conversation leads near the oracles of God, there should always be in our speech that which corresponds to the taking off of the shoes of our feet on holy ground. II. SPEECH SEASONED WITH SALT, i.e., not insipid, as talk is that is only negatively good. 1. Its importance. It is frequently lack of salt that has brought religious conversation into disrepute. The more grace there is in the words the more salt do they need to make them palatable, and to render them worthy of themes so high. In the intercourse of daily life there is a willingness merely to fill up the time with a continuous flow of words, no matter with how little wit or sense or even freshness. But the Christian should regard the capacity for conversation as a talent to be employed for precious uses. More than anything else it makes home attractive, gives a charm to society, and counteracts, when well employed, the charm of vicious society. 2. Its cultivation. In order to talk well(1) we must not enter into conversation lazily and listlessly. It is net thus that we engage in other recreations, the best of which are only varied employments. (2) We need to train ourselves and should keep ourselves abreast of current topics, and so exercise our minds upon them that we may not reproduce the hackneyed commonplaces of the press and street. (3) We need to read much and well with a view of being conversant with what everybody is ready to talk about, and to have our own speciality from which we can contribute to the common stock of knowledge. (4) Then as to conversational power there is the widest difference between him who moves ever as in a blind study, and him who goes through life with his eyes and ears wide open. The incidents of a walk through crowded streets or country lanes, the treasured experiences of distant travel, the curious information gleaned from transient fellow-wayfarers, the contents of an old book may add largely to one's materials for pleasant and appetising conversation. (5) We must throw ourselves unreservedly into social intercourse instead of keeping up our own insulated trains of thought, listening by snatches, and answering at haphazard. If we want to meditate let it be in solitude. If we talk, that is our work for the time being, and let us put our best into it. If the theme be grave, let it have our ripest thoughts in well-weighted utterance; if gay, let us contribute what we can of mirth. III. BUT WITH THE SALT NEVER FORGET THE GRACE. Not mere amusement is the Christian's aim, but edification, i.e., building up the social edifice with its substantial foundation, frame, and walls of solid principle, with its firm fretwork and tracery that shall lack no element of beauty. There are occasions on which he must speak directly in defence of the truth and plead his blaster's cause, and sometimes deal out rebuke. But there are more numerous occasions when, with a heart always loyal, he can serve the cause of virtue much more efficiently by talking on common subjects in a Christian way, and by dropping unostentatiously, ever and anon, a word in season that may be a seed-thought for a spiritual harvest. (A. P. Peabody, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. |
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