Sin and its consequences in Christian preaching highlight the destructive outcomes of turning from God's will, often depicted through vivid images like sowing tares or the inward deformity caused by anger. These illustrations warn against rationalizing sin and emphasize its pervasive harm, both to the individual and others, underscoring the need for repentance and vigilance (Romans 6:23, James 1:15).
Hezekiah exposed idolatry by naming sin correctly, warning against justifying sin with euphemisms.
The footnote in the New International Version at 2 Kings 18:4 is most interesting. When Hezekiah found the children of Israel worshiping the brazen serpent made by Moses in the wilderness, he destroyed it. Hezekiah called the serpent "Nehushtan." The footnote explains the meaning of the word as "a serpent made of brass."
We wonder how such an idol could have existed for so long. It would seem that it would have been destroyed in one of the reformation movements of one of the judges or kings. In my opinion, it lasted so long because it apparently was not recognized as an idol. Perhaps the children of Israel justified the worship by not calling it an idol. Hezekiah, however, came and called it what it really was-a brass image of a snake.
How often we justify sin by either ignoring it or calling it a different name! Some call adultery "a meaningful relationship." We excuse covetousness by calling it "prudence" or "economy." A life of sensual pleasure is "living with gusto."
In answer to a critic, Abraham Lincoln asked, "How many legs does a cow have?" "Four," was the reply. "If you call her tail a leg, how many does she have?" "Five," was the answer. "No," Lincoln said, "just calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."
Have we made a similar mistake? Do we think that sin is not sin just because we do not call it by the right name?
Like lambs, believers should avoid sin despite its tempting appearance.
Children sometimes do not listen. They hear what they want to hear. We, as their parents, often strive to work in their lives and give them guidelines to follow for their own good and because we love them. We know and understand this, but many times our children do not. They become angry and resentful towards us because they believe we are robbing them of fully experiencing life, and we are taking away their opportunities for fun and happiness. We sometimes want to beat our heads against a wall in frustration.
I wonder if God feels that way also in regards to us, His children? Listen to this story:
There was once a lamb and its mother. It seems the lamb passed a pig pen each morning on the way to pasture with its mother. Watching the pigs wallow in the mud seemed like fun to the lamb, and on an especially hot day the lamb asked his mother if he could jump the fence and wallow in the cool mud. She replied, "No." Then the lamb asked the question, "Why?" The mother just said, "SHEEP DO NOT WALLOW."
This did not satisfy the lamb. He felt she had "put him down and exercised force she should not have," etc. So, as soon as the mother was out of sight, the lamb ran to the pig pen and jumped the fence. He was soon feeling the cool mud on his feet, his legs, and soon his stomach. After a few moments he decided he had better go back to his mother, but he could not. He was stuck! Mud and wool do not mix. His pleasure had become his prison. He cried out and was rescued by the kindly farmer. When cleaned and returned to the fold, the mother said, "Remember, sheep do not wallow."
Words, once spoken, cannot be taken back and cause lasting harm.
There was a peasant with a troubled conscience who went to a monk for advice. He said that he had circulated a vile story about a friend, only to find out the story was not true. "If you want to make peace with your conscience," said the monk, "you must fill a bag with chicken feathers, go to every dooryard in the village, and drop at each of them one fluffy feather." The peasant did as he was told. Then he returned to the monk and announced he had done penance for his folly. "Not yet," replied the monk, "Take your bag, make the rounds again and gather up every feather that you have dropped." "But the wind must have blown them all away," said the peasant. Words are easily dropped, but no matter how hard you try, you can never get them back again.
Sowing sin leads to a harvest of evil and destruction in life.
I was at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, and I noticed there a little oil painting, only about a foot square, and the face was the most hideous I have ever seen. On the paper attached to the painting were the words "Sowing the tares," and the face looked more like a demon's than a man's. As he sowed these tares, up came serpents and reptiles, and they were crawling up his body, and all around were woods with wolves and animals prowling in them. I have seen that picture many times since. Ah! the reaping time is coming. If you sow to the flesh you must reap the flesh.
Trying to drown spiritual sorrow in worldly pleasures only postpones reckoning and worsens debt.
"He is a mountebank who strives to make men forget their spiritual sorrows instead of leading them to the true cure. This is like a man in debt who drinks to drown his thoughts, but this neither pays the debt nor postpones the reckoning." When conscience is uneasy, it is foolish as well as wicked to attempt to smother its cries with worldly merriment. Nay, let us hear it
Sin spreads easily among people, but holiness does not transmit as readily.
"We easily catch an infectious disease from one another, but no man receiveth health from another's company." Too true. Evil communications inevitably corrupt good manners; but good communications do not so necessarily improve evil manners. We more readily learn evil than good, and we are also more forcible in communicating sin than virtue. Both as to the giving out and the receiving, the aptness lies on the wrong side. What a proof of our natural depravity! What a change must grace work in us before we shall be fully like our Lord Jesus, who was incapable of being inoculated by sin, but abundantly able to communicate goodness; for healing virtue proceeded from him. When shall we become disseminators of holiness by our very presence? When shall we dwell where every companion shall minister to our soul's health? Such a place Jesus is preparing for us, and thither is he bringing his redeemed ones.
Small sins can entangle and enslave, leading to ruin if unchecked.
"In gaming there is a secret witchery. A man will play a little, and only venture a small sum, but soon he is wormed in, and more and more entangled; and so men think it is no great matter to sin a little, and yet that little leadeth on to more." The illustration is most forcible. Many persons have put down a piece of silver on the gaming-table when passing through the room, and from that moment their ruin has been sealed. They will be seen from day to day staking their hundreds, till the last fatal roll of the ball leaves them penniless. For the while gamblers live, and move, and have their being in the game: their eyes are quick, and their brains are sharp, to see each turn of the play: they are the willing, abject slaves of what is called amusement. Thus doth sin begin with littles, and glide into more serious faults; till the sinner is spellbound, and finds himself engrossed with folly, which he has no will to leave. Be it ours to give no place to the devil. Let him not have a spot whereon to set up his enchantment and work his diabolical arts. If we never venture a farthing upon Satan's table, we shall never be made beggars by his devices. If he is not allowed to spin a spider's web about us, he will never be able to hold us with the cords of iniquity. If we never wade into sin we shall never drown in it. Lord, keep us from the appearance of evil.
Hidden sin within the heart can destroy a soul even without outward signs.
"Many die of inward bleeding as well as by outward wounds." Every surgeon can give instances of such deaths. Not an abrasion of the skin was visible: the dying man had neither gash, nor cut, nor even a pin's prick, and yet his life oozed away in secret. Thus, without an open fault, a man's soul may perish. If wrath rage within, it is fatal, though no revengeful act has been perpetrated; if lust be burning in the heart, the man is lost, though he has never advanced to a lascivious deed; if unbelief proves an inward enmity against God, the man is condemned already, though no blasphemous word has crossed his lip. Sin is a bleeding at the heart. It is a disease which destroys the true life within, as well as the fruit of it without; therefore let every man beware of flattering himself that he is right with God because no glaring vice is manifest in his daily conversation. The worm none the less surely destroys the apple because its first operations are at the core, and quite out of sight. If fire be utterly hidden among combustible materials, it will not therefore be any the less sure and rapid in its devouring work. "Sin, which dwelleth in me," is the enemy that I must fight against, as well as sin which goeth out of me. O Lord, help me to be healthy in the fountain of my being. Heal my heart, and so I shall be healed. Heart-disease baffles all physicians but Thyself. This, however, is Thy spécialité. Lord, display Thy sovereign power and skill in the centre of my being.
Even slight contact with sin defiles the heart like the sun tans exposed skin.
"As a man that walks in the sun, unawares, before he thinks of it, his countenance is tanned, so our hearts are defiled by the slightest contact with sin." We have seen men who were quite fair where their hats covered their foreheads, and thoroughly bronzed where the sun had looked upon them. A man's heart had need be covered with a veil of holy carefulness all over, or the world will get at it, and brown it with evil. Some trades and callings are like a tropical climate, and their blackening effect is soon visible: certain companies are still more so; they make their mark upon the best of men, and that mark is not to their improvement. With difficulty can a man prevent the world's influencing him for evil; evil communications will corrupt good manners unless a sacred remedy is heartily used. See the effect of evil upon professors in Jeremiah's day; he says: "Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick." Let us, as much as we can, keep ourselves to ourselves, and go quietly through life. A man of eminence, who outlived the French Revolution, was asked how he escaped the guillotine, and he replied, "I made myself of no reputation, and kept silence." Let us, like him, stay within doors. If we must go forth abroad, it is well to walk on the shady side of the street, by keeping as much out of the world's influence as we can; and it is also wise to carry with us such holy thoughts and feelings
226 'ILLUSTRATIONS AND MEDITATIONS.' as may act as a screen to ward off the excessive power of evil. We have no wish to become as black as the inhabitants of this sun-burnt clime, seeing we are not numbered with them, but are here as strangers and foreigners. Wash me, most blessed Jesus, in that sacred bath which thou hast prepared; for it will make me fair forever. Black as I now am I shall then be whiter than snow. Renew me, and I shall be without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.
Anger distorts a person inwardly and outwardly, likened to a devil-piloted ship at sea.
The angry man is compared to a ship sent into the sea, which hath the Devil for its pilot. The anger of mortal man should be mortal like himself. But we say of many, as Valerius Maximus of Sylla, it is a question, whether they or their anger die first, or whether death prevents them both together. If you look into this troubled sea of anger, and desire to see the image of a man, behold, you find fiery eyes, a faltering tongue, gnashing teeth, a heart boiling in brine and drying up the moisture of the flesh; till there be scarce any part left of his right composition.
— T. Adams
Greed for gold led Cortes to conquer and cause great suffering and death.
Cortes was asked by various Mexican States, what commodities or drugs he wanted, and was promised an abundant supply. He and his Spaniards, he answered, had a disease at their hearts, which nothing but gold could cure; and he had received intelligence that Mexico abounded with it. Under the pretence of a friendly conference, he made Montezuma his prisoner, and ordered him to pay tribute to
Charles V. Immense sums were paid; but the demand was boundless. Tumults ensued. Cortes displayed amazing generalship; and some millions of the natives were sacrificed to the disease of his heart. Percy.
Rich men remain covetous and miserable despite their wealth, never satisfied.
We see the most rich worldlings live the most miserably, slaved to that wealth whereof they keep the key under their girdles. Esuriunt in popina, as we say, "they starve in a cook's shop." A man would think, that, if wealth could do any good, it could surely do this good, keep the owner from want, hunger, sorrow, care. No, even these evils riches do not avoid, but rather force on him. Whereof is a man covetous but of riches? When these riches come, you think he is cured of his covetousness: no, he is more covetous; though the desires of his mind be granted, yet this precludes not the access of new desires to the mind. So a man might strive to extinguish the lamp by putting oil into it; but this makes it burn more. And as it is with some, that thirstily drink harsh and ill-brewed drinks, have not their heat allayed, but inflamed; so this worldling's hot eagerness of riches is not cooled, but fired, by his abundance. T. Adams.
Weeds outgrow flowers because the soil favors them, showing sin's growth in hearts.
A lady asked her gardener why the weeds always outgrew and covered the flowers. "Madam," answered he, "the soil is mother to the weeds, but only stepmother to the flowers."
Besetting sins are like a tap-root that sustains and grows the tree of sin until cut.
Almost every tree has its tap-root, which goes down straight into the earth, as the trunk goes into the air; and, until that root is cut, the tree will stand and grow, no matter how the fibres and roots be injured. Besetting sins are often the tap-root of the tree of sin, which bears fruit unto death. One sin unmortified may destroy the soul. One lust maintained, in spite of conscience, and sin still lives. Bowes.
A brief exposure to a corrupt book left lasting sinful marks and bitterness despite repentance.
About twenty-five years ago, I formed a most intimate acquaintance with a young man of fine education and commanding talents; and we soon became bosom friends. One morning after school, at a street-corner, he handed me a book, which he said he could lend to me for only one quarter of an hour. We stood at that corner a few moments, while I looked at the obscene pictures, and read a few pages in that polluting volume. I handed it back to him, and never saw it again; but the poison took effect, "the sin left its mark." I cannot erase the effects of the impure thoughts which in that quarter of an hour that vile book lodged in my heart, and which (may God forgive me!) I harbored there. I can and do pray against the sin, and for God's grace yet to conquer it; but it is a thorn in my flesh, and still causes me great bitterness and anguish. Young men, as a lover of your souls, I tell you in all sincerity that there is nothing which I would not willingly give to have the veil of oblivion cast over the scenes and the sentiments of that corrupt volume, which still haunt me like foul spectres. J. A. James.
A busy-body spreads conflict by stirring up others with harmful gossip.
His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins table-talk of his neighbor at another's board, to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter, whose choleric answer he returns to his first host, enlarged with a second edition: so, as it used to be done in the fight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. Bp. Hall.
Busy-bodies undermine peace in families and societies with harmful intentions.
He is a treacherous supplanter and underminer of the peace of all families and societies; this being a maxim of an unfailing truth, that nobody ever prys into another man's concerns but with a design to do, or to be able to do, him a mischief. Dr. South.
Calumny is a fiery, destructive sin accompanied by envy, fraud, and conspiracy.
Apelles painted her thus: There sits a man with great and open ears, inviting Calumny, with his hand held out, to come to him; and two women, Ignorance and Suspicion, stand near him. Calumny breaks out in a fury; her countenance is comely and beautiful, her eyes sparkle like fire, and her face is inflamed with anger; she holds a lighted torch in her left hand, and with her right twists a young man's neck, who holds up his hands in prayer to the gods. Before her goes Envy, pale and nasty; on her side are Fraud and Conspiracy; behind her follows Repentance, clad in mourning, and her clothes torn, with her head turned backwards, as if she looked for Truth, who comes slowly after. Andrew Tooke.
Calumny spreads like unquenchable fire, causing widespread damage and strife.
It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt unquenched beneath the water; or like the weeds, which, when you have extirpated them in one place, are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or, to use the metaphor of St. James, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it goes, and burns with fiercer conflagration as its own speed increases: "It sets on fire the whole course of nature" (literally the wheel of nature). F. W. Robertson.
Evil companions infect the soul and body like a plague, causing spiritual harm.
As it is madness to open our doors to those who bring the plague which infecteth our bodies, it is much greater madness to set open our doors to swearers, blasphemers, ribald talkers, and ungodly livers, who infect both soul and body.
— Cawdray
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Friendship based on shared sin is unstable and leads to mutual hatred and distrust.
Friendship sealed by companionship in sin will not last long. It is not worth having. It deserves not to be known by that noble name. Friends that are glued together by the slime of their lusts will be torn asunder soon; and these foul exudations that seem now to bind them into one will become the fuel to a flame of mutual hate when first a spark of disagreement fall. They will bite and devour one another. The degree of their privacy to each other's wickedness will be the measure of their dislike and distrust. Armot.
A lady dies during a gambling game, showing the deadly consequences of sinful pleasures.
A lady of fortune in a fashionable town was in the habit of sending invitations to the gay of her own class, to form evening card-parties at her house. On one occasion, she had collected an evening party of the most stylish guests the town possessed. The cards were introduced, as on former occasions; and when all were absorbed in the favorite game, and the excitement was at its highest, the lady suddenly fainted, and fell under the table. The company all rose; but one said, "Stay! — don't touch the bell. Let us finish the game. She would have done so herself, and would wish us, if she spoke." The game lasted another half-hour; and then they rang the bell, and sent for the doctor: but he pronounced her to have been dead twenty minutes. Clements.
Idleness leads to vulnerability to the devil and spiritual ruin like the Dead Sea.
Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle, that the Devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot, when fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man.
— Quarles
Idleness degrades a person to a useless state, like oysters growing for worms' banquet.
In such a world as ours, the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster-bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and 'succulent for the grave-worms'
banquet.
— H. Mann
Extreme idleness is shown by a man who won't even turn his head from discomfort.
A favorite illustration among the Arabs of extreme idleness is the man that would not turn his head over on his pillow, though the muddy water leaking through the roof fell plump into his eye.
— Dr. Thomson
A lazy community suffers decay, poverty, and social disorder due to widespread idleness.
In a town of lazy men, I should expect to find crazy houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off; doors hingeless, and all a-creak; windows stuffed with rags, hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and warmth in winter, every side of the house would swarm with vermin in the hot weather, and with starveling pigs in cold.
Fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance; and gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud. Lank cattle would follow every loaded wagon, supplicating a morsel, with famine in their looks. Children would be ragged, dirty, saucy; the schoolhouse empty; the jail full; the church silent; the grog-shops noisy; and the carpenter, the saddler, and the blacksmith would do their principal work at the taverns. Beecher.
Rich people’s idleness leads to indulgence in fleeting pleasures and eventual shame.
Idleness is very dangerous to those that are rich, and feel no want in this life; for, while they give themselves to it, voluptuousness overcomes reason, and they are snared in the deadly traps and deceits of the world, and are poisoned with carnal pleasures and fleshly delights, which are enjoyable for a little while, but at length leave them to shame and confusion. Cawdray.
Idleness fosters sin, mental and physical harm, and is one of the seven deadly sins.
Idleness is the bane of body and mind; the nurse of naughtiness; the step-mother of discipline; one of the seven deadly sins; the cushion upon which the Devil chiefly reposes; a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases: for the mind is naturally active; and, if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief, or sinks into melancholy. Burton.
Ignorance is likened to darkness where harmful things grow unseen and unchecked.
Modern discoveries have shown that the seeds of epidemic and miasmatic diseases are generated and exert their activity during the night, and in places unvisited by the sun's beams,—a true picture of the cause of mental and moral ignorance.
