GASHMU THE GOSSIP

"Gashmu saith it."
(Nehemiah 6:6.)
XV
GASHMU THE GOSSIP
Gashmu is a mere name in Scripture. He is mentioned only three times--twice as acting with Sanballat against Nehemiah, and once as the authority for a false piece of news. It is reported, wrote Sanballat in a cruel letter to Nehemiah, that you are plotting against the king, and "Gashmu saith it." That is what Gashmu stands for in Scripture, a tale-bearer, a slanderer, a gossip. What an unenviable immortality to be remembered only as the pedlar of a tale he knew to be untrue!
As long as we live together in society, there will be a kind of gossip that is inevitable, the kindly or merely casual relation of small and insignificant matters of fact, as that the painters are in next door, or that Mrs So-and-So has got a new bonnet. It is not of that I want to speak.
For there is another sort as deadly as the plague, and in civilised countries the cruellest and most devilish instrument that one man or woman can use against another. And that is the inventing of an untrue report about a man's doings or character, or the unthinking repetition of the same. That is the pestilence that walketh in darkness; that is the destruction that wasteth at noonday. And I wish I had the pen to write of it as it deserves.
It is very, very common. We are all too ready to repeat what we have heard, with a "Gashmu saith it," as if that certified the tale correct. And the harm done is simply incalculable. If my house is burned or I lose my money, I can still get along by the kindness of my friends for a little, till I find my feet again. But whoever by some lying story takes away my character, deals me a blow from which there is no recovering, which my loyalest friends can do nothing to avert. I have no redress, no compensation, and no help. Any one may be a victim, and you and I, by thoughtlessly passing on the deadly thing, may all unconsciously be driving another nail into a man's coffin.
Did you ever lie awake at night and think that even now the cancer may have begun on YOUR good name, that whispers may be going about among your friends concerning you? Those who know you will hear it, and will say, It's a lie! But that won't stop it. And you will never know till some day you waken up and find that your reputation is in danger. And not one word or vestige of truth may be in it. It may be a lie pure and simple, or a colourable counterfeit of some quite innocent truth. That won't make any difference. It is enough merely to start it, and, like a stone thrown down an Alpine slope, it gathers others in its train, till an avalanche swoops down on some unsuspecting head.
When King Arthur enrolled his Knights of the Round Table, he made them take the oath to "speak no slander." And there is a knightly chivalry of speech which ought to be the mark of all those who have promised fealty to Jesus Christ. Our discipleship of Jesus demands of us the high endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, and that presupposes, as one of its consequences, that we guard his name against false witness as carefully as we protect our own. If we hear a good story about some one, a report that is to his credit and honour, let us blazon that abroad. We are all far too slow at that, and somehow the tale that is a little damaging has a far easier and more rapid circulation. Might we not make more of our brother's successes? Might we not oftener repeat about him what he is too modest ever to say about himself? It were a true and kindly Christian act. But never, as we call ourselves servants of Christ, never do our brother such a grievous irreparable wrong as to start about him a tale which may not be true. God can and will forgive you your sins of speech. But even He cannot make clean the character which a foolish word has sullied.
King Arthur went further, however, than demanding that his knights should speak no slander. Their vow included the words, "no, nor listen to it." And that is a high and difficult course to keep. It is not easy, when you are being told of something that is striking or sensational of a merely gossipy character, to stop the conversation and lead it into other channels. It requires great courage and as great tact. But how many of us ever try it?
If, however, the refusal to listen be regarded as a counsel of perfection, there remains yet the further injunction--never REPEAT the gossip you have heard. That at least is homely and possible.
We used to read in our book of Fables of the lamb that noticed this significant thing about the track that led to the lion's den--that all the footprints pointed inwards, but there were none returning. "Vestigia nulla retrorsum." No footprints backwards. It would be a good motto for us all. Let the stories, the ill-humoured, unkind, uncharitable sayings that float and wander about everywhere, let them come to us as they will, but let the traces end there. Be such a person that men may trace a story from its source down the chain TO you, but never PAST you.
We can do that much at least for our friends. All about us is the constant, unquiet drift of gossip and distorted half-truth, as restless as the sand in the desert, dancing and whirling with every puff of wind. We can do something to arrest that drift. We can be for our friends in some measure what Isaiah said that God's Servant, when He came, should be, the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land, stopping the drift of the sand, and sheltering our friends by our loyalty and our silence.
Don't even repeat the gossip that comes to you, not only for the strong reason already given, but also for this little one, that you won't likely repeat it correctly. With all the will in the world, it is one of the hardest things to retail a story just exactly as you heard it. Sir Walter Scott, speaking about anecdotes that he had heard, said he always liked to cock up their bonnets a bit and put a staff in their hands that they might walk on a little brisker and sprightlier than when they came to him! But we all do that, without meaning to do it at all. We add a little bit. We exaggerate just the tiniest fraction, and our hearer when he repeats the story does the same, and so the matter grows till it is big enough to do much mischief.
"A Whisper broke the air,
A soft light tone and low,
Yet barbed with shame and woe.
Now, might it only perish there,
Nor further go!
Ah me! A quick and eager ear
Caught up the little meaning sound;
Another voice has breathed it clear,
And so it wandered round,
From ear to lip, from lip to ear,
Until it reached a gentle heart,
And that--it broke."
There is a legend that once a king avoided death in a poisoned cup that had been handed to him by making over it the sign of the Cross--when it broke in pieces at his feet. Let us, when we are tempted to retail the vivid, poisonous piece of scandal, stop and invoke the Spirit of Christ. Is this that I am going to say about my brother the kind of thing I should say if Christ were standing by? Am I justified in turning over that bit of gossip which may be true, but which ought not to be true? Our duty, who profess and call ourselves Christians, is clear. We are to speak no slander no, nor listen to it. We are to retail evil about no man. We are to love one another.
PRAYER
O Lord our God, whose command it is that we love our neighbour as ourselves, help us to cherish and protect his good name as carefully as we guard our own. Make us more willing to repeat the good about him, but slower to retail or exaggerate the evil. Grant us all a deeper sense of the deadly wrong a foolish tongue can work, and keep Thou the door of our lips. For Thy Name's sake. Amen.