01.26. The Auricular Cuspidor
Chapter 26 THE AURICULAR CUSPIDOR.
We are taught in the Bible that the human body is the Temple of God, and that dedicated to Him it should be kept from all defilement; otherwise it would meet with the divine judgment and destruction. In the teaching of consecration we are told to put every member on the altar. The idea being that any part not devoted to God would be the cause of the undoing and ruin of the complete man, soul and body.
Much history of individuals is given in Scripture to bring out this truth, that a single member of the physical man withheld from the rightful claim of the Lord, and misdirected in lines of selfishness and sin, will be certain to bring trouble, misfortune, calamity, and unless repented of, destruction to the man himself. The hair of Absalom, the foot of Asahel, the tongue of Shimei, the eye of David, were prolific of misery and death to their owners. The argument made and conclusion drawn from these and many other instances in the Word of God, is that the whole man has to be given to God if that being would not be lost; that perfect consecration is the price and condition of spiritual safety on earth and entrance into heaven at last. This we doubt not is the reason that Job said that he had made a covenant with his eye, while people today seeking holiness enumerate physical members as well as spiritual faculties and say I lay hands, feet, eyes, lips, tongue and all on the altar.
It is well known to any Bible student how much stress is laid in Holy Writ on the devotement of the tongue to God. How many warnings are given as to its wrong use, what fearful descriptions of its power to injure and destroy, while the solemn statement is made that it sets on fire, and is itself set on fire of hell. In Psalms 15:1-5 we are given a list of those who cannot enter heaven, and among them we find mentioned the person "who taketh up a reproach against his neighbor." He did not originate the accusation or slander, but simply repeated it, handed it around, and kept it going. He has not used his tongue to ask the vilified or maligned individual if the charge was true, but falling into the line of detraction with a decided relish, helped the libel and falsehood on its way.
Such a person with such a tongue, God says, cannot enter heaven.
Because of these grave perversions of the lips, preachers have much to say in the pulpit against unruly speech. And yet there is another organ of the body located very close to the tongue, called the ear, and whose misuse leads to the most direful spiritual calamities, about which we hear little or nothing in the way of warning, rebuke and proper instruction.
Christ recognizes the marvellous power for evil of this member in the words "Take heed what ye hear" and "Take heed how ye hear." From what we can read in the Bible and see in life, it is as essential to guard the ear as the eye, to lay the former on the altar as the latter.
One thing is certain, and that is if we do not listen to a reproach against a neighbor, we certainly would have nothing to repeat with the tongue. So the ear seems to get the tongue into the very trouble mentioned in the fifteenth psalm.
There seems to be two injunctions that might well cover most of our cases.
One is to take heed how we hear.
We owe it to God, to man and our own souls to listen properly and in the right spirit to what is said to us. No one can estimate the amount of trouble and misery that has come upon human beings through faulty attention and a consequent incorrect report of what was declared to have been said. Who can number the preachers whose sermons have thus been twisted out of all shape. While statements made in the social and family life were so distorted through some failure to grasp the whole utterance as to bring about lifetime separation and even death itself.
Another injunction is to take heed what we hear.
It is the ignoring of this most wise commandment that prostitutes this exalted member of the body and lowers it to an environment of degradation and to realms of infamy. In turn it revenges itself on the soul, by dragging the spirit down to breathe the same foul atmosphere, walk by the identical cesspools, and sink finally in the mud-wallows of iniquity.
It is wonderful the effect produced upon the heart within, by what we listen to on the outside. Infidelity leaves its dark doubts, impurity its stains, and error and untruth precipitates a deposit which results in damaged faith, warped character, and a wrong life. Where is the victim who can escape blame for this inward injury, when it was so evidently in his power to refuse to hear, and to move entirely away from the blighting utterances of such a speaker? The well formed ear is a beautiful organ, and to behold such a handsome and remarkable member not only misused as mentioned, but abused, dishonored, degraded, and actually made to serve the purpose of spittoon is a thought and fact almost too horrible and sickening for words. A spittoon is a receptacle for the expectoration of mouths. Saliva stained and discolored with snuff and tobacco and scented with alcohol is ejected copiously into the wood, iron or stone jar. Moreover not only anything can be shot into it, but anybody can use it. Its condition soon becomes too disgusting for verbal expression.
Now to think that the human ear, which can be and should be devoted to the hearing of that which exalts, uplifts, purifies and saves, is beheld a receptacle for the profanity, obscenity, hatred, malice, slander and lying going on all around, and its owner willing thus to prostitute and degrade the God-given faculty and instrument is as horrible and disgusting a fact in the character realm, as the full spittoon is a nauseous and detestable object of vision in the material world.
Such a degenerate ear not only secures all scandal, slander and filth that is being expectorated by human mouths, but it allows every malicious spitter to have that organ as a cuspidor. Of course we do not mean that we cannot listen to grave, distressing charges against people who have erred and are guilty. This would be the height of folly and would put judge, jury and newspaper reporters out of work. This also would consign the church itself to a state of ignorance, and place as well as infliction upon it of wrong and sinful conduct that should not be thought of a single moment. Its integrity and purity alike demand a proper hearkening to and disposal of matters pertaining to its spiritual welfare as well as right standing before the outside world. The evil we are writing against is the debasing of a noble organ to the level, as well as purpose, of a spittoon. The open, ready, listening to every declaration, sling, fling, innuendo, as well as deliberate slander of people, whether they be of the church or even of the world.
We once had a holiness man to tell us that he took a certain abusive and scurrilous paper to see what was being said about the various brethren. We could but marvel as he spoke as to where the difference came in between the mud-flinging editors of that journal and the individual before us who with eager eyes read all its insinuations and accusations. As he evidently enjoyed what they relished; and devoured what they had previously masticated, we felt that they were not only of the same tribe, but he was on still a lower plane than the parties he was reading after. In like manner we fail to see any difference between the backbiter and the individual who listens with enjoyment to the backbiting. The one who takes up a reproach against his neighbor, and the person who by sympathetic appreciative listening really endorses the tale bearer, and so puts himself on the same plane and in the same rank with a character whom God declares cannot enter His tabernacle or dwell in His holy hill. The lips of the tobacco spitter and flaring mouth of a spittoon bear a remarkable likeness to each other in smell, stain, color and repulsive appearance. And so between the ready circulator of scandal, and the quick interested listener to slander there is a similarity in certain moral features, an unmistakable family likeness as to character that we do not doubt an instant, that the same doom God pronounces on one He utters against the other; and the celestial gate which is shut to the former is as certainly closed upon the latter.
We all observe how quickly a man dodges, swerves and even runs to save his clothes and body from bilge and slop thrown out of a window above or near him. How much more quickly should he avoid the flinging or pouring forth from malicious, falsifying mouths of a froth spawn and venom which God tells us has had its inspiration and source from the depths of the Bottomless Abyss. The question is, how can one with proper regard for others, and real respect for himself, not only lend his ear to every scandal spitter in the land who approaches him, but consents to hold the auricle spittoon himself, while the tattler and slanderer expectorates.
If it was possible to take flashlight charactergraphs, the invention would reveal many a circle and group on the street and in the hotel office, where most of the human figures would be seen sporting huge cuspidors on the sides of their heads instead of ears, while others ejected muddy, discolored streams of language from their mouths towards the six foot receptacles before them and so expertly was the thing done on both sides that not a single drop fell on the ground.
We wonder if the person who is likely to be offended at this figure, may not have done repeatedly what we are writing about, and furnished just such receivers for gossip, slander and misrepresentation as we have described.
Truly it would be well for the world and better for us all if the ear could be exalted from the spittoon relation and changed into a great receiver and recorder of noble utterances, lofty sentiment, and splendid achievements, gleaned from every realm; of ennobling knowledge, and good spoken of man and God rather than evil of our brother fellow traveler to eternity, or falsehood of Him who made us, redeemed us and overflowed our hearts and lives with every good and perfect gift from both the material and spiritual world. With such a capital of mind and heart wealth, a man could never be poor in the true sense of the word, but would make others rich; need never be unhappy or unemployed, but become a blessing to every one and at all times.
There would be no exclusion from the Holy Hill of a character like this: but all such redeemed beings would constitute the nobility of Heaven; be celestial princes; God’s sons and daughters; and look marvellously like Him on the Throne who while on earth did good to the children of men, and who lifted countless thousands from the mire and pit into which they had fallen, and never pulled a single one down.
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