The subject is the tongue. My tongue, to be more precise.

“Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” (James 3:11).

Anytime I choose to speak ill of another, I’m contaminating any “sweet water” I may have spoken before.

Maybe even after as well!

That means it is nigh to impossible to compensate for bad speech by spewing out a bunch of good speech.

Adding a bunch of sweet water to bitter water really doesn’t redeem the bitter water. It still tastes bad.

So . . . don’t indulge bad speech, Mark.