When Paul called the list of the world’s villainy, he put in the midst of the roll “Whisperers.” They are so-called because they generally speak undervoice, and in a confidential way, their hand to the side of the mouth, acting as a funnel to keep the precious information from wandering into the wrong ear.
They speak softly, not because they have lack of lung force, of because they are overpowered with the spirit of gentleness, but because they want to escape the consequences of defamation.
If no one hears but the person whispered unto, and the speaker be arraigned, he can deny the whole thing, for whisperers are always first-class liars! Some people whisper because they are hoarse from a cold, or because they wish to convey some useful information without disturbing others, but the slanderer gives muffled utterance from sinister and depraved motive, and sometimes you can only hear the sibilant sound as the letter “S” drops from the tongue into the listening ear, the brief hiss of the serpent as it projects its venom.
From the frequency with which Paul speaks of them under different titles, I conclude that he must have suffered somewhat from them. His personal appearance was defective, and that made him perhaps the target of this ridicule.
And besides that, he was a bachelor, persisting in his celibacy down into the sixties, indeed, all the way through; and some having failed in their connubial designs upon him, the little missionary was put under the raking fires of these whisperers.
He was no doubt a rare morsel for their scandalization; and he cannot keep his patience any longer, and he lays hold of these miscreants of the tongue, and gives them a very hard setting down in the text among the scoundrels and murderers.
They are to be found everywhere, these whisperers. I think their paradise is a country village of about one or two thousand people, where everybody knows everybody else. But they are also to be found in our cities. They have a prying disposition.
They look into the basement windows at the tables of their neighbors, and can tell just what they have to eat, morning and night. They can see as far through a key-hole as other people can see with the door wide open.
They can hear conversation on the opposite side of the room. The world to them is a whispering gallery. —TALMAGE.