The Remedy Against Evil Speaking
G. S. Barrett, D. D. Deuteronomy 5:20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. What is the remedy for all this evil? Is it not to cultivate sedulously within ourselves certain good and wholesome principles of thinking and speaking which will be our best safeguard against the sin of bearing false witness? 1. Let us maintain the precious habit of accuracy of speech. "Accuracy," said Davison, "is of the noble family of the truth." Let us guard ourselves at all times against exaggeration or diminution of the truth. When we speak, let us say the thing as it is. 2. Let us seek that generous and kindly spirit that believes good rather than evil of a neighbour. It is, happily, possible to reach the habit of kindly thought, of generous tolerance and charitable belief; and just as the atmosphere on the higher Alps is too pure for poisonous microbes to live in it, so this habit will generate in our heart and life an atmosphere in which all that is uncharitable and bitter and base and false will utterly perish. 3. Lot us remember the great principle, that the more we differ from a man or a politician or a church, the more anxiously and scrupulously should we seek to be fair and just in all our estimates and judgments of him. 4. Let us never forget that all men, howsoever much they may differ from us, are our neighbours, are our brothers, and in the light of this great brotherhood, this larger and nobler kinship, only realised perfectly in Christ, let us interpret this command. (G. S. Barrett, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. WEB: "Neither shall you give false testimony against your neighbor.