The consequences of sin in Christian preaching highlight the inevitable destruction and alienation that follow disobedience to God’s law. Sin leads to ruin not only spiritually but also in practical life, as selfishness, greed, and wrong choices bring harm and loss (Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 6:23). Illustrations often use images of ruin, reaping a whirlwind, and the collapse of prosperity to convey these truths.
The wicked infect the godly like disease spreads, causing spiritual discord.
As one scabbed sheep infecteth many others, as a little poison infecteth a great deal of meat and drink, as a few sick of the plague may infect a whole house or town; even so the company of the wicked infecteth the godly, because there can be no concord between the sons of wisdom and the sons of folly. Caudray.
Bad company is like a nail deeply driven in, hard to remove without damage.
Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but, being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. St. Augustine.
Consequences of actions often exceed the apparent magnitude of their causes.
As the dimensions of the tree are not always proportioned to the size of the seed, so the consequences of things are not proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events which have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
— Colton
Bad counsel in youth can poison the entire course of a person's life.
As Hypanis, a river in Scythia, has a marvellous sweetness until a little bitter spring, which Herodotus calls Erampes, mingles with it, and gives it a wonderful bitterness; so evil counsel given to children and youth will imbitter the whole stream of their lives. Cawdray.
Ill counsel caused Israel's division, marked by youthfulness and violence.
The kingdom of Israel was first rent and broken by ill counsel; upon which counsel there are set for our instruction the two marks whereby bad counsel is forever best discerned, — that it was young counsel for the persons, and violent counsel for the matter.
— Lord Bacon
Covetousness causes dissatisfaction and robs one of true spiritual and physical nourishment.
The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty. Like a chemist, he turns every thing into silver, — what he should wear, and what he should eat, — and so robs back and belly of warmth, of sustenance. The covetous give more heed to the priests of Janus, than to the apostles of Jesus. His looks to his entering guests are like Diana's image in Chios, which frowned with a lowering countenance on all that came into the temple, but looked blithe and smiled on them that departed. As the dog in Æsop's fable lost the real flesh for the shadow of it, so the covetous man casts away the true riches for the love of the shadowy. T. Adams.
Covetousness is madness that harms oneself and others by hoarding beyond need.
Damasippus the stoic, in Horace, proves that all mortal men dote by fits, — some one way, some another; but that covetous men are madder than the rest: and he that shall truly look into their estates and examine their symptoms shall find no better of them but that they are all fools, as Nabal was. For what greater folly can there be, or madness, than to macerate himself when he need not? And when, as Cyprian notes, "he may be freed from his burden, and eased of his pains, will go on still, his wealth increasing, when he hath enough, to get more to live beside himself;" to starve his genius, keep back from his wife and children; neither letting them nor friends use or enjoy that which is theirs by right, and which they much need perhaps; like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth only keep it, because it shall do nobody else good, hurting himself and others; and for a little momentary pelf, damn his own soul? They are commonly sad and etric by nature, as Ahab's spirit was, because he could not get Naboth's vineyard. R. Burton.
Covetous people live in fear and misery, anxiously guarding their wealth.
Lucian, in that pleasant and witty dialogue called Gallus, brings in Mycillus the cobbler disputing with his cock, sometimes Pythagoras; where, after much speech pro and con. to prove the happiness of a mean estate, and the discontents of a rich man, Pythagoras' cock in the end, to illustrate by examples that which he had said, brings him to Gryphon the usurer's house at midnight, and after that to Euerates; whom they found both awake, casting up their accounts, and telling of their money, lean, dry, pale, and anxious, still suspecting lest somebody should make a hole through the wall, and so get in; or, if a rat or mouse did but stir, starting upon a sudden, and running to the door to see whether all were fast. Plautus, in his Aulularia, makes old Euelio commanding. Staphyla his wife to shut the doors fast, and the fire to be put out, lest anybody should make that an errand to come to his house. When he washed his hands, he was loath to fling away the foul water, complaining that he was undone because the smoke got out of his roof. And as he went from home, seeing a crow scratch upon the muck-hill, returned in haste, taking it for malum omen, an ill sign, his money was digged up; with many such. He that will but observe their actions shall find these and many such passages not feigned for sport, but really performed, verified, indeed, by such covetous and miserable wretches, and that it is mere madness to live like a wretch, and die rich. R. Burton.
A covetous rich man does no good with his wealth while alive, only after death.
It is a common saying, that a hog is good for nothing while he is alive: not good for use, as the horse; nor to draw, as the ox; nor to clothe, as the sheep; nor to give milk, as the cow; nor to keep the house, as the dog; but only for the slaughter. So a covetous rich man, just like a hog, doth no good with his riches whilst he liveth; but, when he is dead, his riches come to be disposed of. Spencer.
Covetousness is the root of many evils and mental misery.
"The desire of money is the root of all evil; and they that lust after it pierce themselves through with sorrows." Hippocrates, therefore, in his epistle to Crateva, an herbalist, gives him this good counsel, — that if it were possible, "amongst other herbs, he should cut up that weed covetousness by the roots, that there be no remainder left; and then know this for a certainty, that, together with their bodies, thou mayest quickly cure all the diseases of their minds." For it is, indeed, the pattern, image, epitome, of all melancholy, the fountain of many miseries, much discontented care and woe, — this "inordinate or immoderate desire of gain, to get or keep money," as Bonaventure defines it, or, as Austin describes it, a madness of the soul; Gregory, a torture; Chrysostom, an insatiable drunkenness; Cyprian, blindness, speciosum supplicum, a plague subverting kingdoms, families, an incurable disease; Budæus, an ill habit, "yielding to no remedies." Neither Esculapius nor Plutus can cure them; a continual plague, saith Solomon, and vexation of spirit, another bell. R. Burton.
Covetousness leads to foolish, anxious labor that ends in self-destruction.
If you should see a man that had a large pond of water, yet living in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink half a draught for fear of lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength in fetching more water to his pond, always thirsty, yet always carrying a bucket of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the drops of rain, gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every mire and mud in hopes of water, and always studying how to make every ditch empty itself into the pond; if you should see him grow gray in these anxious labors, and at last end a careful, thirsty life by falling into his own pond, — would you not say that such a one was not only the author of his own disquiet, but was foolish enough to be reckoned among madmen? But, foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the follies and absurd disquiets of the covetous man. Law.
Living for riches leads to misery and spiritual loss despite worldly gain.
After hypocrites, the greatest dupes the Devil has are those who exhaust an anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and live miserably and meanly, only to die magnificently and rich. For, like the hypocrites, the only disinterested action these men can accuse themselves of is that of serving the Devil without receiving his wages. He that stands every day of his life behind a counter, until he drops from it into the grave, may negotiate many very profitable bargains: but he has made a single bad one; so bad, indeed, that it counterbalances all the rest. For the empty foolery of dying rich, he has paid down his health, his happiness, and his integrity. Colton.
Covetous rich men devour others like whales swallowing smaller fish.
"Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea?" "Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale: he plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on the land, who never leave gaping, till they've swallowed the whole parish, — church, steeple, bells, and all."
— Shakespeare
Covetous men hoard wealth but neglect their own basic needs.
As the ass that earrieth meat for his master's belly, and clothes for his back, yet himself doth feed upon grass, and contenteth himself with one hair-skin; even so the covetous man, whose chests are stuffed with money and his wardrobe with apparel, can hardly afford his belly a good meal's meat, or cover his back with a good coat. Cawdray.
Covetousness is insatiable and leads to sorrow and eternal death.
Like as an infected member of a man vexed with an itch is always clawing and rubbing, even so the covetous mind is restless in gathering together. As fire is never satisfied with wood, nor the earth with water, nor the grave with dead carcasses, nor hell with its prey; so the covetous is never satisfied with money. As the fish swallowing the hook, together with the bait, is taken and killed; so the covetous with their gold get many sorrows which entangle them in death everlasting. Cawdray.
Most adult criminals begin their sinful path between ages eight and sixteen.
Of all the adult male criminals in London, not two in a hundred have entered upon a course of crime who have lived an honest life up to the age of twenty: almost all who enter upon a course of crime do so between the ages of eight and sixteen. End of Shaftesbury.
Criminals' mutual betrayal leads to their mutual destruction.
Unreliability of Three German robbers, having acquired a valuable booty, agreed to divide the spoil, and to retire from so dangerous a vocation. When the day arrived which they had appointed for that purpose, one of them was despatched to a neighboring town to purchase provisions for their last carousal. The other two secretly agreed to murder him on his return, that each might come in for half of the plunder, instead of one-third. They did so. But the murdered man was a closer calculator than his assassins; for he had previously poisoned part of the provisions, in order that he might appropriate the whole of the spoil to himself. The triumvirate of worthies were found dead together. Percy.
Early cruelty leads to a life forsaken by God and eventual ruin.
There was a lad strolling through the fields with his sister. They found a nest of rabbits. The sister was charmed with the nest itself, and with its living occupants; but the lad seized them, mimicking their squeaks and their struggles. In vain his sister wept and entreated: he flung them up into the air, and shouted as each fell dead upon the stones. Ten years after, that sister sat weeping again by that boy's side. He was in chains, sentenced to be hung for shooting a farmer whilst poaching: they were waiting for the awful procession to knock at the cell-door. "Sister," he said, "do you remember the nest of rabbits ten years ago, how you begged and prayed, and I ridiculed? I verily believe, that, from that day, God forsook me, and left me to follow my own inclinations. If I had yielded to your tears then, you and I would not be weeping these bitter tears now."
— W. J. Bolton
Cursing harms not only others but often rebounds to harm the curser themselves.
Diogenes warned a child, whom he saw throwing stones at random among the people, to take heed he did not hit his own father. Such is the condition of all cursing men, whose tongues run with great speed on the Devil's errands; whose maledictions are shot out of their mouths like fools' bolts, not regarding where they light; whereas many times they fall upon their friends, their children, and often themselves; or like guns, which while men discharge at others recoil on their own heads. If every curse should stick a visible blister on the tongue, as it doth insensible ones on the soul, how many men's tongues would be too big for their mouths, and their mouths as an open sepulchre full of dead men's bones! Spencer.
Imprecations often backfire, harming the one who utters them more than the target.
We observed a Nabian receive a severe kick from a camel; and his manner of expressing his indignation was sufficiently amusing. He instantly fell on his knees, and after devoting, with a variety of imprecations, the sacred head of the offender, scattered in the air a quantity of sand, of which the greater part fell on himself. Quarrels among the Arabs are carried on in the same manner. Waddington and Hamburg.
Dancing led to fatal exhaustion, illustrating poor preparation for death.
At a dancing-party, given at the residence of Mr. Scott, near Avoca, Ala., recently, the participants became much heated and exhausted by dancing nearly all of a warm night. In this condition they started for home. The weather changed, producing alarming results on their excited systems. Of those who engaged in the dance, two died the next morning, seven died a little later, and all suffered more or less. This is only one of many instances of the fatal result of dancing. Many a young lady rests in an untimely grave through this cause. But it is a poor preparation for death.
Sin seems small in life but burdensome at death, needing deliverance from death's body.
A massive piece of timber floating upon the water may be easily moved towards the shore; but, if it once be grounded, great pains of many men are required to start it. Man's life is the water; death, the shore; and sin, the piece of timber. In life, sin seems trifling; but in death it assumes its true proportions,—small ones so great, light ones so heavy, that the poor sinner finds them a burden insupportable, and cries in misery, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
— Spencer
Small debts or sins can collectively bind and enslave a person completely.
Gulliver was pinned down to the earth by pygmies only as long as his thumb, but there were thousands of them; and he was bound down, finger by finger, with a rope no larger than a hair, and each rope of itself he could have taken and broken on the instant: but, altogether, they bound him fast, until he begged for mercy. So is it with debt or any evil habit.
Sin's corruption is like being forced to bear death's stench until life is destroyed.
The Romans sometimes compelled a captive to be joined face to face with a dead body, and to bear it about until the horrible effluvia destroyed the life of the living victim. Virgil, speaking of Mignatius, describes the punishment,—
"The living and the dead at his command Were coupled face to face, and hand to hand; Till choked with stench, in loathed embraces tied, The lingering wretches pined away and died."
Despair is a fearful sin that attacks God, others, and oneself with distrust and blasphemy.
Daniel's prophecy tells of four beasts, — the first a lion, the second a bear, the third a leopard; but the fourth, without distinction of either kind or sex or name, is said to be very fearful and terrible and strong, and had great iron teeth, destroyed, and brake in pieces, and stamped under his feet. Such a thing is despair: other sins are fearful and terrible enough, and have as it were the rage of lions and bears and leopards, to spoil and make desolate the soul of man; but despair hath horns too, — horns to push at God with blasphemy, at his brethren with injury, and at his own soul with distrust of mercy. Despair is a complicated sin, the complement of all sins. The greatest sins are said to be those which are opposed to the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity,—infidelity to faith, despair to hope, hatred to charity; amongst which, infidelity and hatred, the one not believing, the other hating God, are in themselves worse: but, in regard of him that sinneth, despair exceedeth them both, in the danger that is annexed unto it; for what can be more miserable, what more foul, than for a poor miserable wretch not to take pity of his own soul? Spencer.
Biting and harming others' reputations leads to mutual destruction and loss of value.
The Scripture saith, "If ye bite one another, ye shall be consumed one of another;" if ye fret and gall one another's reputation, the end will be, that every man shall go hence, like coin cried down, of less price than he came hither.
— Lord Bacon
Unjust detraction reveals weakness and meanness, destroying both the victim and detractor.
Unjustifiable detraction always proves the weakness as well as meanness of the party that employs it. To be constantly carping at and exaggerating petty blemishes in the characters of others, putting an unfavorable construction on their language, or "damning with faint praise" their deeds, betrays, on the part of the detractor, a conscious inability to maintain a reputable standing on legitimate and honorable ground. The course pursued proves him to be a sour, surly, mean-spirited creature; and we may at once conclude that he is a man disappointed and broken down. He belongs to the miserable race whose special vocation it is to "murder fame,"—loathsome leeches on the body politic; or ferocious vampire-bats, that mutilate all the pure things they can reach, and corrode with their poisonous slime every thing they do not speedily destroy.
— E. L. Mayoon
Disobedience leaves lasting scars and diminishes a person's capacity for virtue.
"Let the sickles alone," said a farmer to his son, who was left in the field while the reapers went to dinner. James obeyed his father for a time; but at length he grew lonesome, and took up a sickle "just to look at it." He then felt its edge, and then thought he would cut "one handful." In so doing, he cut his little finger, inflicting a wound which rendered the middle joint useless for the rest of his life. When it was healed, an ugly scar and a stiff finger were lasting moments of his disobedience. Disobedience to his heavenly Father leaves a scar on the sinner's soul, and lessens his capacity for virtue.
Lack of firm obedience training can lead to a life of sin and eventual punishment.
A young man was chained to a fellow-convict, and was about to leave his native country and heartbroken mother, probably forever. When a child, he was allowed to have his own way. When his mother ought to have firmly but kindly enforced obedience, she foolishly yielded to his whims. The effect of this unwise home-training became yearly more apparent. When sent to school, he was idle, and would not learn. He soon began to play truant. His mother scolded the master for punishing her headstrong boy. With bad companions, he was soon found robbing orchards and cruelly treating dumb animals. His career was from bad to worse. At last, for a highway robbery, he was convicted, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude.
Social drinking customs often lead to intemperance and sin.
Drinking-usages are the chief cause of intemperance; and these derive their force and authority, in the first instance, wholly from those who give law to fashion. Bishop Potter.
Christian wine-drinkers can unknowingly influence others toward death by sin.
It is the reputable Christian wine-drinkers who are the men who send forth from the high places of society, and sometimes even from the portals of the sanctuary, an unsuspected, unrebuked, but powerful influence, which is secretly and silently doing on every side—among the young, among the aged, among even females—its work of death.
— Dr. Nott
Drunkenness combined with water caused a man's death by freezing in his body.
John Tatsou, an Indian, a native of Lyme in Connecticut, being found dead on a winter's morning, not far from a tavern where he had been drinking freely of spirituous liquors the evening before, the Indians immediately assembled a jury of their own tribe, who, after examining the body, unanimously agreed, "that the said Tatsou's death was occasioned by the freezing of a large quantity of water in his body, that had been imprudently mixed with the rum he drank."
Drunkenness defaces God's image and harms body, reason, conscience, and character.
There is no sin which doth more deface God's image than drunkenness: it disguiseth a person, and doth even unman him. Drunkenness makes him have the throat of a fish, the belly of a swine, and the head of an ass. Drunkenness is the shame of nature, the extinguisher of reason, the shipwreck of chastity, and the murder of conscience. Drunkenness is hurtful to the body. The cup kills more than the cannon: it causes dropsies, catarrhs, apoplexies; it fills the eye with fire, and the legs with water, and turns the body into a hospital.
— T. Watson
A drunk man froze to death after failing to cross a creek due to intoxication.
Joseph Ralston of Phillipsburg, Penn., met with a horrible death, by freezing, a few days ago. He had been drinking freely, and had, while drunk, endeavored to wade the Moshannoo Creek; but, ere he had proceeded two-thirds of the way, his limbs refused to perform their office. He grasped a bough of an overhanging tree, unable to advance farther; and soon the fast congealing water cemented close about him, — a tomb of ice which stretched from shore to shore. Two days after, he was found there rigid as an icicle, his knees imbedded in a sheet of the frozen element seven inches thick, his body inclined a little forward, his hands clutching the boughs, eyes astare, and despair pictured on his features.
— Pittsburgh Dispatch
A man was knocked down by smelling strong liquor, illustrating alcohol's overpowering effect.
A druggist who keeps a store in the western part of the State, and is more fond of taking jokes than medicine, was recently surprised by the appearance of a thorough Yankee, who asked, "Be yeou the drugger?" — "Well, I suppose so: I sell drugs."—"Well, have yeou got eny uv this ere sentin' stuff as the gals put on their bankerbers?"—"Oh, yes!"—"Wall, our Sal is gwine to be married; and she's gin mo a ninepence, and told me to invest the whole 'mount in sentin' stuff, so to make her sweet, ef I could find somethin' to suit: so, it yeou're a mind, I'll just smell around." The Yankee smelled around without being suited, until the "drugger" got tired of him, and, taking down a bottle of hartshorn, said, "I've got a scenting stuff that will suit you. A single drop on a handkerchief will stay for weeks, and you can't wash it out; but, to get the strength of it, you must take a good big smell." —"Is that so, mister? Well, jist hold on a minute till I git breath; and, when I say, 'Now!' yeou put it under my smeller." The hartshorn of course knocked the Yankee down, as liquor has many a man. Do you suppose he got up and smelt again? Rolling his sleeves, and doubling his fists, he said, "Yeou made me smell that tarnal everlasting stuff, mister; and now I'll make yeou smell brimstone." And he gave the druggist a beating which he will remember for years. This is the kind of treatment Mr. Gough would have the drunkard give the drink that knocks him down.
Drunkenness led a group to madness and suicidal thoughts, showing its destructive power.
Molière, the father of French comedy, being in a delicate state of health, left Paris, and retired to his villa at Auteuil, to pass a short time. One day, Boileau, accompanied by Chapelle, Lulli, De Junsac, Nantouillet, came to visit him. Molière could not join them on account of his illness; but he gave the keys of his house to Chapelle, and begged him to do the honors for him. Chapelle acquitted himself of this task in such a manner, that, at supper, not one of them was sober. They began to discuss the most serious matters; and at last, having impously decided that the greatest good was never to have been born, and the next to die as soon afterwards as possible, they resolved, shooking as the proposition may sound, to go in a body, and drown themselves in the Seine. In the mean while, Molière, who had retired to his chamber, was informed of this state of affairs; and, invalid, as he was, he hastened to join the mad party. Seeing how far gone they were, he did not attempt to reason them out of their determination, but demanded to know what he had done that they should think of destroying themselves without him. "He is right," cried Chapelle; "we have been unjust towards him: he shall be drowned with us." — "One moment, if you please, though," observed the dramatist. "This is the last act of our lives, and not to be undertaken rashly: if we drown ourselves at this hour of the night, people will say that we are drunk, and we shall lose all merit. Let us wait until morning; and then, in broad daylight, and upon empty stomachs, we will throw ourselves into the river in the face of our fellow-creatures." This was, after some demurrer, approved of; and the next morning, bad as the world was allowed to be, no one thought it bad enough to quit it.
Monkeys imitating a drunkard's behavior rebuked him, leading to his sobriety.
A rich drunkard kept two monkeys for his sport. Once he looked into his dining-room, where he and his guests had left some wine, and the two had mounted the table, and were helping themselves to the wine, jabbering and gesturing just as they had seen their master and his guests. Soon they were merry, and jumped about; but at last they got to fighting on the floor, and tearing out one another's hair. The drunkard stood in amazement. "What!" said he, "is this a picture of myself? Do the brutes rebuke me?" Ever after he was a sober man.
Envy destroys the soul like a man crushed by the statue he tried to destroy.
I remember reading somewhere in a Grecian story of a man who killed himself through envy. His fellow-citizens had reared a statue to one of their number who was a celebrated victor in the public games. So strong was the feeling of envy which this incited in the breast of one of the hero's rivals, that he went forth every night, in order, if possible, to destroy that monument. After repeated efforts, he moved it from its pedestal, and it fell; and in its fall it crushed him. An unintentional symbolic act was this, showing the suicidal action of envy on the soul. It is ever an element of misery, a burning coal which "comes hissing hot from hell."
— Dr. Thomas
Envy is a constant, troubling companion like a shadow follows the sun.
As a shadow accompanies those that walk in the sun, so envy is a constant companion of those that excel others. As there is no shadow where there is no sun, so there is no envy where there is no prosperity. As the joys of the happy increase, the sorrows of the envious multiply. As a ship tossed with continual waves, so the envious is always in trouble of mind, repining at the success of others. Cawdray.
People disparage what they cannot have, revealing envy’s deceptive spirit.
To pooh-pooh what we are never likely to possess is wonderfully easy. The confirmed celibate is loudest in his denunciations of matrimony. In Æsop, it is the tailless fox that advocates the disuse of tails. It is the grapes we cannot reach that we call sour. Æneas Sage.
Envy affects all people regardless of status, like a weed growing everywhere.
Envy is a weed that grows in all soils and climates, and is no less luxuriant in the country than in the court; is not confined to any rank of men or extent of fortune, but rages in the breasts of all degrees. Alexander was not prouder than Diogenes; and it may be, if we would endeavor to surprise it in its most gaudy dress and attire, and in the exercise of its full empire and tyranny, we should find it in schoolmasters and scholars, or in some country lady, or the knight her husband; all which ranks of people more despise their neighbors than all the degrees of honor in which courts abound; and it rages as much in a sordid, affected dress as in all the silks and embroideries which the excess of the age and the folly of youth delight to be adorned with.
— Lord Clarendon
Envy and virtue are incompatible, like natural enemies whose blood never mingles.
As the enmity which is between eagles and dragons, the boar and the elephant, between whom it is reported there is such discord and hatred, that, even when they are dead, their blood will in no wise mingle together; so envy and virtue can in no wise agree. He that will be in favor with the envious man must needs be vicious. Cawdray.
A man's worldly success cost him his soul, showing the ruin of neglecting spiritual life.
"What is the value of this estate?" said a gentleman to another with whom he was riding, as they passed a fine mansion surrounded by fair and fertile fields. "I don't know what it is valued at: I know what it cost its late possessor."—"How much?"—"His soul. Early in life, he professed faith in Christ, and obtained a subordinate position in a mercantile establishment. He continued to maintain a reputable religious profession till he became a partner in the firm. Then he gave less attention to religion, and more and more to business; and the cares of the world choked the word. He became exceedingly rich in money, but so poor and miserly in soul, that none would have suspected that he had ever been religious. At length, he purchased the large estate referred to, built a costly mansion, sickened, and died. Just before he died, he remarked, 'My prosperity has been my ruin.'"
Prideful cruelty leads to harsh punishment mirroring one's own intended evil.
Tamerlane the Great, having made war on Bajazet, Emperor of the Turks, overthrew him in battle, and took him prisoner. The victor gave the captive monarch at first a very civil reception; and, entering into familiar conversation with him, said, "Now, king, tell me freely and truly what thou wouldst have done with me had I fallen into thy power." Bajazet, who was of a fierce and haughty spirit, is said to have thus replied, "Had the gods given unto me the victory, I would have enclosed thee in an iron cage, and carried thee about with me as a spectacle of derision to the world." Tamerlane wrathfully replied, "Then, proud man, as thou wouldst have done to me, even so shall I do unto thee." A strong iron cage was made, into which the fallen emperor was thrust; and thus, exposed like a wild beast, he was carried along in the train of his conqueror. Nearly three years were passed by the once mighty Bajazet in this cruel state of durance; and at last, being told that he must be carried into Tartary, despairing of then obtaining his freedom, he struck his head with such violence against the bars of his cage as to put an end to his wretched life. Percy.
Excess leads to ruin and loss of delight, illustrating the dangers of overindulgence.
Brevities. Violent fires soon burn out themselves. — Shakspeare. — The misfortune is, that, when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight by excess and satiety — Knox. — Every inordinate cup is unblest, and the ingredient is a devil. — Shakspeare. — Too much is stark nought. — Welsh. — One may be surfeited with eating tarts. Gentleness does more than violence. — French. — Soon fire, soon ashes. — Dutch. — A bow overbent will weaken. Extremes meet. Too far east is west. A baited cat may grow as fierce as a lion. English.
Sin has ruined humanity’s original glory though nature still reflects God’s design.
The harp of Eden, alas! is broken. Unstrung and mute, an exiled race have hung it on the willows; and "Ichabod" stands written now in the furrows of man's guilty forehead, and on the wreck of his ruined estate. Some things remain unaffected by the blight of sin, as God made them for himself; the flowers have lost neither their bloom nor fragrance; the rose smells as sweet as it did when bathed in the dews of paradise; and seas and seasons, obedient to their original impulse, roll on as of old to their Maker's glory. But from man, alas! how is the glory departed! Look at his body when the light of the eye is quenched, and the countenance is changed, and the noble form is festering in corruption, mouldering into the dust of death; or (change still more hideous) look at the soul! The spirit of piety dead, the mind under a dark eclipse, hatred to God rankling in that once loving heart, it retains but some vestiges of its original grandeur, — just enough, like the beautiful tracery and noble arches of a ruined pile, to make us feel what glory once was there, and now is gone. Dr. Guthrie.
Man’s sin caused all creation to be subjected to futility and decay.
When man sinned, then, in the language of our great poet, "All Nature felt the wound." Man was as the highest note in the scale of creation; and, when he descended, through all Nature there followed a corresponding reduction. It became subject to vanity, not willingly, not by an act of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected the same; by reason, that is, of man (Rom. viii. 20). Trench.
Man's fallen state is like a ruined church once holy but now deserted and decayed.
We have sometimes thought that we saw the fittest emblem of man's fallen state in the ruins of an old church: now deserted, now desecrated, defiled, what a change is there! Save in the ivy, that, like pity, clings to the crumbling wall, sustaining and veiling its decay, and in some sweet wild-flower rooted in windowsill or gaping rent, beauty and life are gone. Yet there, once on a time, many a person was baptized to God; there holy words were spoken, holy vows were taken, and holy communious held. There are eyes in glory that turn with interest to that lonely spot. God and man often met within these roofless walls: "This and that man were born there." But now the only sounds are the sighing of the wind or the roar of the storm, the boot of the owl or the hiss of the serpent; no life is found there now but in the brood of the night-bird, which has its nest among the ruins above, or in the worms that fatten upon the dead in their cold graves below. "The glory is departed." And once a shrine of God, but now a deserted sanctuary, may we not write 'Ichabod' on the heart? The ruin resounds with the echoes which the ear of fancy hears muttering among the desolate heaps of Babylon, — "Fallen, fallen, fallen." Dr. Guthrie.
Falling results from being too close to the place of failure, illustrating cause and effect of sin.
"Mother," said little Nezzie, one morning, after having fallen from his bed, "I think I know why I fell out of bed last night. It was because I slept too near the place where I got in." Musing a little, he added: "No, that was not the reason: it was because I slept too near where I fell out."
A lie lasts longer than its temporary benefits, showing the lasting harm of falsehood.
A little newsboy, to sell his paper, told a lie. The matter came up in Sabbath school. "Would you tell a lie for three cents?" asked a teacher of one of the boys. "No, ma'am!" answered Dick, very decidedly. "For a dollar?"—"No, ma'am!"—"For a thousand dollars?" Dick was staggered. A thousand dollars looked big. Oh! would it not buy lots of things? While he was thinking, another boy behind him roared out. "No, ma'am!"—"Why not?" asked the teacher. "Because, when the thousand dollars is all gone, and all the things they have got with them are gone too, the lie is there all the same," answered the boy.
Everything we make is available for free because of a generous community of supporters.
Donate