Now, it was all those vices of the tongue in full outbreak in the day of James the Just that made that apostle, half in sorrow, half in anger, demand of all his readers that they should henceforth begin to bridle their tongues.  And, like all that most practical apostle’s counsels, that is a most impressive and memorable commandment.  For, it is well known that all sane men who either ride on or drive unruly horses, take good care to bridle their horses well before they bring them out of their stable door.  And then they keep their bridle-hand firm closed on the bridle-rein till their horses are back in the stable again.  Especially and particularly they keep a close eye and a firm hand on their horse’s bridle on all steep inclines and at all sharp angles and sudden turns in the road; when sudden trains are passing and when stray dogs are barking.  If the rider or the driver of a horse did not look at nothing else but the bridle of his horse, both he and his horse under him would soon be in the ditch,—­as so many of us are at the present moment because we have an untamed tongue in our mouth on which we have not yet begun to put the bridle of truth and justice and brotherly love.  Indeed, such woe and misery has an untamed tongue wrought in other churches and in other and more serious ages than ours, that special religious brotherhoods have been banded together just on the special and strict engagement that they would above all things put a bridle on their tongues.  ’What are the chief cares of a young convert?’ asked such a convert at an aged Carthusian.  ’I said I will take heed to my ways that I trespass not with my tongue,’ replied the saintly father.  ‘Say no more for the present,’ interrupted the youthful beginner; ’I will go home and practise that, and will come again when I have performed it.’

Now, whatever faults that tall man had who took up so much of Faithful’s time and attention, he was a saint compared with the men and the women who have just passed before us.  Talkative, as John Bunyan so scornfully names that tall man, though he undoubtedly takes up too much time and too much space in Bunyan’s book, was not a busybody in other men’s matters at any rate.  Nobody could call him a detractor or a backbiter or a talebearer or a liar.  Christian knew him well, and had known him long, but Christian was not afraid to leave him alone with Faithful.  We all know men we feel it unsafe to leave long alone with our friends.  We feel sure that they will be talking about us, and that to our hurt, as soon as our backs are about.  But to give that tall man his due, he was not given with all his talk to tale-bearing or scandal or detraction.  Had he been guilty of any of these things, Faithful would soon have found him out, and would have left him to go to the Celestial City by himself.  But, after talking for half a day with Talkative, instead of finding out anything wrong in the tall man’s talk, Faithful was so taken and so struck with it,