James 3:5-6 Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindles!… I knew a lad once, a pleasant, open-hearted, merry boy as you ever saw. He was grown old enough to leave school and go to work. "Come," said a companion one day, "come into the publichouse and have a glass." He held back for a minute; he had never done it before, and he felt it was wrong. "Oh, come on! "cried his friend, laughing, and taking his arm. "You must not be too particular, you know." "Well," thought the lad to himself, "it's only once and only just a little." It was the same thing over again the next day. Then two or three times a day, and still it was only just once and only just a little. Down this wretched alley, with its miserable houses and its miserable people and its miserable children, see what looks like a heap of rags. And now he lifts the foul face of a drunkard, a face so bleared and blotted that you shrink back from it frightened. "Only just once, and only just a little" — this is what it has turned him into. (M. G. Pearse.) Parallel Verses KJV: Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! |
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