Note, 1. A good tongue is healing, healing to wounded consciences by
comforting them, to sin-sick souls by convincing them, to peace and
love when it is broken by accommodating differences, compromising
matters in variance, and reconciling parties at variance; this is the
healing of the tongue, which is a tree of life, the leaves of which
have a sanative virtue, Rev. xxii. 2. He that knows how to discourse
will make the place he lives in a paradise. 2. An evil tongue is
wounding (perverseness, passion, falsehood, and filthiness there, are a
breach in the spirit); it wounds the conscience of the evil speaker,
and occasions either guilt or grief to the hearers, and both are to be
reckoned breaches in the spirit. Hard words indeed break no bones, but
many a heart has been broken by them.