Your weekly Dose of Spurgeon
The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from John Ploughman's Talk, pages 155-156, Pilgrim Publications.
"I've known men who opened their mouths like barn doors in boasting what they would do if they were in someone else's shoes."
We must try to state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If we begin calling eleven inches a foot, we shall go on till we call one inch four-and-twenty. If we call a heifer a cow, we may one day call a dormouse a bullock. Once go in for exaggeration, and you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; you have left the road of truth, and there is no telling where the crooked lane may lead you to.
He who tells little lies will soon think nothing of great ones, for the principle is the same. Where there is a mouse-hole, there will soon be a rat-hole; and if the kitten comes, the cat will follow. It seldom rains but it pours; a little untruth leads on to a perfect shower of lying.
Self-praise is no recommendation. A man’s praise smells sweet when it comes out of other men’s mouths, but in his own it stinks. Grow your own cherries, but don’t sing your own praises. Boasters are never worth a button with the shank off. Long tongue, short hand. Great talkers, little doers. Dogs that bark much run away when it is time to bite. The leanest pig squeaks most. It is not the hen which cackles most, that lays most eggs.
Saying and doing are two different things. It is the barren cow that bellows. There may be great noise of threshing where there is no wheat. Great boast, little roast. Much froth, little beer. Drums sound loud because there is nothing in them. Good men know themselves too well to chant their own praises. Barges without cargoes float high on the canal; but the fuller they are, the lower they sink. Good cheese sells itself without puffery. Good wine needs no bush; and when men are really excellent, people find it out without telling.
Bounce is the sign of folly. Loud braying reveals an ass. If a man is ignorant and holds his tongue, no one will despise him; but if he rattles on with an empty pate, and a tongue that brags like forty, he will write out his own name in capital letters, and they will be these—F, O, O, L.
As "by the ears the ass is known"—
A truth as sure as parsons preach,
"The man," as proverbs long have shown,
"Is seen most plainly through his speech."
