And what horrible mutterings are these that we hear coming up from dark corners, from workshops, from factories, from lodging-houses, from streets? What whisperings are these, hot and burning with the fire of hell? They are words of impurity and bad conversations. They are accents that slay living souls, that pollute both the lips of the speaker and the ears of the listener; and, alas! the tongue, the unguarded, unwatched tongue, is the offender again. Ah! you are ensnared once more in your speech. Watch your tongue, then, lest you die the death of mortal sin. There is an every-day expression, brethren, which contains, I think, the best advice that can be given you; and that is, "Hold your tongue." Yes, _hold_ it under control of reason; chain it by prayer and the sacraments. {454} If it wants to run into bitter words and unkind speeches, hold it back. If it wants to blaspheme, hold it; hold it, or you are lost! If it wants to utter words contrary to Christian modesty, hold it for Christ's sake, or you are undone. Take care lest Satan ensnare you in your speech; if he does he will condemn you to a cruel death in hell. Speech is silver and silence is gold. Few, if any, have been saved by much speaking; many have been lost by it. Oh! then, watch your tongue lest it destroy you. Rev. Algernon A. Brown. ------------------------ Sermon CXXXVI. _Render, therefore, to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's._ --St. Matthew xxii. 21. What does our Lord mean by this, my brethren? He seems to say that there are some things which do not belong to God, but to some one else; that God has only a partial right in this world which he has created. It would appear to belong partly to Cæsar; and who can this Cæsar be, who shares the earth with its Creator? Cæsar was the name of the Roman emperor, and our Lord means by Cæsar the temporal authority of the state. Now, it must seem absurd to any Catholic, and indeed to any one who believes in God at all, to say that this authority has any right in the world other than that which God has lent to it; so we cannot imagine that our Lord meant anything like that. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people, who do not profess to be atheists, who really maintain not only that the state has rights against him, but even that its right always prevails over his. They say that we must render everything to Cæsar, whether God wants it or not; that the law of the state must be obeyed, even against the law of God as shown to us by conscience. {455}