truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even
necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a dropped lip, an
arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an
incredulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence,
may do the work: and when the light and trifling thing which has done
the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and
rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison
human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was
it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction,
"Adder's poison is under their lips."

The second license given to the tongue is in the way of persecution:
"therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God."
"We!"--men who bear the name of Christ--curse our brethren! Christians
persecuted Christians. Thus even in St. James's age that spirit had
begun, the monstrous fact of Christian persecution; from that day it
has continued, through long centuries, up to the present time. The
Church of Christ assumed the office of denunciation, and except in the
first council, whose object was not to strain, but to relax the bonds
of brotherhood, not a council has met for eighteen centuries which has
not guarded each profession of belief by the too customary formula,
"If any man maintain otherwise than this, let him be accursed."

Myriad, countless curses have echoed through those long ages; the
Church has forgotten her Master's spirit and called down fire from
heaven. A fearful thought to consider this as the spectacle on which
the eye of God has rested. He looks down upon the creatures He has
made, and hears everywhere the language of religious
imprecations:--and after all, who is proved right by curses?