"Put before your mouth several doors and on your ears several locks"--_i.e._, put doors upon doors and locks upon locks, because the tongue is capable, in its fury, to force open the first door and break the first lock. "Melt your gold and silver, and make for your words a balance"--weighing them all before uttering them--"and have for your mouth solid bridles which are tightly held," for fear that the tongue, getting the better of your vigilance, will break loose and do mischief in all directions. Considering these many barriers and formidable checks, must we not see the necessity of burying in a well-fortified prison that most dangerous monster, the tongue? "Ah! truly death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Prov. xviii.). "And although the sword has been the instrument of innumerable murders, the tongue has at all times beaten it in producing death" (Ecclus. xxviii.). "It forms but a small part of the body, and has done mighty evil: as the helm badly directed causes the wreck of a fine ship, and as a spark may enkindle a forest. . . . Unquiet evil, inflamed firebrand, source of deadly poison, world of iniquity" (St. James iii.). XXI SECOND PRESERVATIVE _To meditate on what the Saints say_ ST. BONAVENTURE relates that St. Francis of Assisi said to his religious one day: "Uncharitable conversation is worse than the assassin, because it kills souls and becomes intoxicated with their blood. It is worse than the mad dog, because it tears out and drags on all sides the living entrails of the neighbour. It is worse than the unclean animal, because it wallows in the filth of vices and makes its favourite pasture there. It is worse than Cham, because it exposes everywhere the nasty spots which soil the face of religion--its mother." St. Bernard goes further: "Do not hesitate to regard the tongue of the backbiter as more cruel than the iron of the lance which pierced our Saviour's side, because it not only pierces His sacred side, but one of His living members also, to whom by its wound it gives death. It is more cruel than the thorns with which His venerable head was crowned and torn, and even than the nails with which the wicked Jews fastened His sacred hands and feet to the Cross, because if our Divine Saviour did not esteem more highly the member of His mystic body (which is pierced by the foul tongue of the slanderer) than His own natural body formed by the operation of the Holy Ghost in the chaste womb of the Virgin Mary, He would never have consented to deliver the latter to ignominies and outrages to spare the former." Now St. Francis and St. Bernard are here speaking to religious. Is it possible, then, for backbiting to glide into religious communities? Yes, certainly. And it is by this snare that Satan catches souls which have escaped all others.