Listen up to my namesake letter-writer James, in the matter of talking as tinderbox . . .

. . . in the opening of his epistle to all and sundry. Let them with ears hear.

1 Do not be too eager, brethren, to impart instruction to others; be sure that, if we do, we shall be called to account all the more strictly.

2 We are betrayed, all of us, into many faults; and a man who is not betrayed into faults of the tongue must be a man perfect at every point, who knows how to curb his whole body.

3 Just so we can make horses obey us, and turn their whole bodies this way and that, by putting a curb in their mouths.

4 Or look at ships; how huge they are, how boisterous are the winds that drive them along! And yet a tiny rudder will turn them this way and that, as the captain’s purpose will have it.

5 Just so, the tongue is a tiny part of our body, and yet what power it can boast! How small a spark it takes to set fire to a vast forest!

6 And that is what the tongue is, a fire. Among the organs of our nature, the tongue has its place as the proper element in which all that is harmful lives. It infects the whole body, and sets fire to this mortal sphere of ours, catching fire itself from hell.