Those who are interested in ships and the method used in guiding them along the desired course, know that the helmsman does not steer by guessing, but by a chart which has grown familiar to him through much study. The Apostle James, in pointing to the tongue as a very powerful instrument for good or evil, vividly likens it to a helm: "Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things."
How many difficulties may be traced to unwise speech, to laxness in governing that "little member," which the apostle also calls "a fire, a world of iniquity"!
If our mental ship seems to strike a hidden reef, there must have been some deviation from the true course. Suppose a faithless helmsman were to become so intent upon watching the progress of a passing ship that he relaxed his grasp on his own wheel! Deviation from the course is very small at its point of departure, but the sides of the angle grow farther and farther apart as the ship advances.
