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I. THE SPEECH OF THE WISE.

1. It is a healing speech. The wholesome tongue, or, literally, as in the margin, a healing tongue, is a tree of life. There are wounded souls in society; souls wounded by insults, slanders, bereavements, disappointments, losses, moral conviction. There is a speech that is healing to those wounds, and that speech is used by the wise. There are societies, too, that are wounded by divisions, animosities. There is a speech which heals social divisions, and the wise employ it.

2. It is a living speech. "It is a tree of life." It is at once the product and producer of life. The speech of the wise is not the vehicle of sapless platitudes, it is the offspring of living conviction. It is a germ falling from the ever-growing tree of living thought, and it produces life too. "Cast forth," says Carlyle, "thy act, thy word, into the everlasting, overgrowing universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die unnoticed today; it will be found flourishing as a banyan grove — perhaps." But the word of the wise is not as a hemlock seed; it is a seed that falls from that tree of life which is to be for the healing of the nations.

3. It is an enlightening speech. "The lips of the wise disperse knowledge," The words of the wise are beams reflected from the great Sun of Truth, and they break upon the darkness with which error has clouded the world.

II. THE SPEECH OF THE FOOLISH.

1. The speech of the foolish is a wounding speech. "Perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit."

2. The speech of the foolish is an empty speech. The heart is here the antithesis to the lips. The foolish man does not disperse knowledge, but the wise does. The fool has no knowledge to disperse.

(Homilist.)

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KJV: A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.

WEB: A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but deceit in it crushes the spirit.