"Would it not be a great degradation of your office if you were to keep
an army of spies in your pay to collect information as to all that your
people said of you? And yet it amounts to this if you allow certain
busybodies to bring you all the gossip of the place. Drive the creatures
away. Abhor those mischief-making, tattling handmaidens to strife.
Those who will fetch will carry, and no doubt the gossips go from your
house and report every observation which falls from your lips, with
plenty of garnishing of their own. Remember that, as the receiver is as
bad as the thief, so the hearer of scandal is a sharer in the guilt of
it. If there were no listening ears there would be no talebearing
tongues. While you are a buyer of ill wares the demand will create the
supply, and the factories of falsehoood will be working full time. No
one wishes to become a creator of lies, and yet he who hears slanders
with pleasure and believes them with readiness will hatch many a brood
into active life" (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 328).
[HT: JT]
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