The Pulpit Commentary — Ephesians — Section 191

business nnd do our best (time and circumstance considered). 'There is forthcr th motive with which we a.re to work. There is the incentive of providing for our own, e.nd specially our own household, and of providing for our household not merely fur the present, but, in view of the uncertainty of our life, also as we can for the fntnrP. And if any one of onrs needed special nourishment or change of air, that woulrl be a reason for our working hard that what was neede<l might be supplied. .13nt in the language here employed there is a look to the needy in body or in soul beyond. our own immediate circle. And it is taught that the Christian is to labour with the view and in the hope of having something over, after making all reasonable allowance for his own, to bestow on the poor and to send the gospel to the heathen. It is this in our aim which is needed to make labour, however assiduous and lawful, distinctively Christian. And the exhorter here himself set a Christian example, "In all things I g,wc you an example, how that so labouring ye ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." And he, even the humblest labourer, who strives in his labour to have something over for Christ (in him that hath need), will not fail, or if he can be said to fail, yet will his effort lead to his labour being accepted of Christ. And if this is the true gospel oj labour, then how much labour is there which must be rejected in which there is a wrong done to Christ in his not receiving his dues or acknowledgment? IV. UNWIIOLESO::IIE SPEECH. I. The negative of Christianity. "Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth." "Perhaps the image which the word (corrupt) calls up was not distinctly present to the apostle's mind; but it might have been, for it is a very just one. The epithet is used to describe-vegetables, meat, and fish which are beginning to go bad; and there are some people whose conversation is quite as unwhole- some as food which is not quite fresh. Unsound itself, it injures the moral health and vigour of those who listen to it." Without being poisonous, words may be unwhole- some. Falsehood he has already condemned. Violence and detraction in speech fall under the next head. Filthiness and foolish talking and jesting come up in the beginning of the next chapter. Words may be neither false, nor violent, nor defama- tory, nor foul, nor senseless, nor profane, and yet be unwholesome. And to such we limit onr attention here. There are some who give the chief place in their conversation to business or household affairs. There are others who give it to fashion, pleasure, amusement. There are others again who give it to the little affairs of their neighbours or to politics. Conversation may properly enough turn upon these things; but when it is so occupied with them as to rouse the impre~sion that the world in one or other of these forms is everything, as to shut out the thought of God, as to take away the feeling of the seriousness of life, then (like food that is not quite fresh) it is fittetl to do harm. There is not, in such conversation, nutriment for the moral being, exerciso for the moral powers. It is to be said, too, that the spirit of worldly conversation is gathered up in certain worldly maxims such as these: that we must look after ourselves; that we must take the good of the world; that we must have our time of gaiety; that we must be like our neighbours. These maxims (as excuses for selfishness, thought- lessness) are unsound; and the apostle, speaking for Christ, would say emphatically, "Let no such corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth." And the peculiarly Christian reason against that kind of speech is given in the words, "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption." It will be seen that the apostle regards speech in a sacred light-he would have it as a medium or organ of the Holy Spirit. It is taught that the Divine Spirit is intensely interested in all the movements of our life. There is not a department to which his interest does not extend, and which he would not have permeated with his holy influences. And when he is thwarted in his holy ends he is grieved as a mother is grieved when a son whom she loves as none else can is not acting according to her wishes and prayers. And it is to be noticed that what is represented as grieving the Spirit is that which is hurtful, not so much by its heinousness as by its commonness. Against graver faults we are placed more on our guard; but we do not think how we grieve the Holy Spirit by the feeble moral tone of our conversation. The Spirit is grieved with the conversa- tion of the unconverted (which is necessarily unwholesome); but he is especially grieved when Christians thwart him by a conversation which is not of him. For on them, as already expressed in the first chapter, his seal was placed, against the day of  190 THE El'ISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. [en, IV, 1--32,