Worldliness and sin in Christian preaching highlight the dangers of attachments to earthly things that entangle and corrupt the soul, leading believers away from spiritual purity (1 John 2:15-16). Illustrations often use images of pollution, entrapment, and fleeting fashions to depict how bad company, materialism, and worldly habits can defile and distract from devotion to Christ (James 4:4).
Worldly attachments entangle the soul like a bird tied down by a string.
A party of children were amusing themselves with a bird, to whose leg they had fastened a string. The poor thing fluttered into the air, and wished to escape, but felt itself suddenly checked, and drawn downwards. Gotthold, who saw what was passing, thought with himself: "It is even so with our soul when it gets entangled with temporal things and worldly lusts."
Lot's worldly choices led to ruin and spiritual corruption in his family and legacy.
Lot chose wisely, as they of the world speak. Well, if this world be all, he got a rich soil, became a prince, had kings for his society and neighbors. It was nothing to Lot that "the men of the land were sinners before the Lord exceedingly;" enough that it was well watered everywhere. But his wife became enervated by voluptuousness, and his children tainted with ineradicable corruption, — the moral miasma of the society wherein he had made his home. Two warnings God gave him: first his home and property were spoiled by the enemy; then came the fire from heaven; and he fled from the cities of the plain a ruined man. His wife looked back with lingering regret upon the splendid home of her luxury and voluptuousness, and was overwhelmed in the incrusting salt; his children carried with them into a new world the plague-spot of that profligacy which had been the child of affluence and idleness; and the spirit of that rain of fire — of the buried cities of the plain — rose again, in the darkest of the crimes which the Old Testament records, to poison the new society at its very fountain. And so the old man stood at last on the brink of the grave, a blackened ruin, scathed by lightning, over the grave of his wife and the shame of his family, — saved, but only "so as by fire." F. W. Robertson.
Evil company corrupts the pure like a clean river polluted by sewage in a city.
Those who willingly associate with the sinful are like men strolling with some trivial object through a district infected with fever, headless of the invisible arrows of disease spreading through the air: or they may be compared to the River Thames, which is a sweet and pretty river enough near its source; but in the great metropolis it has kept company with drains and sewers, under the belief that its current was too powerful and pure to be injured by them. It was meant that the river should purify the sewer; but, instead of that, the sewer has corrupted the river. Union Magazine.
Bad company harms even the innocent, like a parrot injured while associating with crows.
The crows, one spring, began to pull up a farmer's young corn, which he determined to prevent. He loaded his gun, and prepared to give them a warm reception. The farmer had a sociable parrot, who, discovering the crows pulling up the corn, flew over and joined them. The farmer detected the crows, but did not see the parrot. He fired among them, and hastened to see what execution he had done. There lay three dead crows, and his pet parrot with ruffled feathers, and a broken leg. When the bird # COMPANY.
was taken home, the children asked, "What did it, papa? what hurt our pretty Poll?"—"Bad company! bad company!" answered the parrot in a solemn voice. "Ay! that it was," said the farmer. "Poll was with those wicked crows when I fired, and received a shot intended for them. Remember the parrot's fate, children: beware of bad company." With these words the farmer turned round, and, with the aid of his wife, bandaged the broken leg; and in a few weeks the parrot was as lively as ever. But it never forgot its adventure in the cornfield; and, if ever the farmer's children engaged in play with quarrelsome companions, it invariably dispersed them with its cry, "Bad company! bad company!"
Living in corrupt environments makes it very hard to remain spiritually pure and unspotted.
As in a distempered and corrupt air, it is hard for him that hath a strong constitution to avoid sickness; so it is in evil company, in corrupt ages and places, very hard to live unspotted from the world. Caudray.
Bad habits and evil company leave lasting painful memories and spiritual scars.
What you learn from bad habits and in bad society you will never forget, and it will be a lasting pang to you. I tell you in all sincerity, not as in the excitement of speech, but as I would confess and have confessed before God, I would give my right hand to-night if I could forget that which I have learned in evil society; if I could tear from my remembrance the scenes which I have witnessed, the transactions which have taken place before me. You cannot, I believe, take away the effect of a single impure thought that has lodged and harbored in the heart. You may pray against it; and, by God's grace, you may conquer it: but it will, through life, cause you bitterness and anguish.
— J. B. Gough
Worldly pleasures can harden hearts and cause unprepared death.
A son was entreated by his mother to give up balls, because they diverted his attention from serious things; but he justified himself by the example of professed Christians, and especially of a Miss P., who, he said, used to make him very unhappy by her serious talk, but lately had become very agreeable, and attended balls. The Spirit still strove with him; but he silenced it by saying, "I am safe if she is." One day, he received an injury which sent him, unconscious and unprepared, into eternity. Dancing kept him from Christ. Will not his blood be found on Miss P.'s garments?
A Christian's invitation to dance caused a non-Christian to reject religious conversation.
A young lady, a professing Christian, invited a young gentleman to be one of a social dancing-party at the house of a friend. Not many months after, during a season of religious interest, she came to him to converse on the subject of his soul's salvation. He reminded her of the invitation given some months before, and closed with the remark, "that he did not want any such Christians to talk religion to him."
Trusting human authority to justify dancing is unsafe and risks eternal loss.
A young lady, in giving her reasons for preferring a particular church, remarked that she "liked it best because it allowed its members to dance." One is reminded of an incident related by Dr. Whately, of an old bridge which had long been thought unsafe even for foot-passengers. People usually went a considerable distance around rather than venture upon it. But one evening a woman, in great haste, came up to the bridge before she reflected on its unsafe condition. It was late, and she had yet to dress for a party. She could not go all the way around, though still afraid to venture. At last, a happy thought seemed to strike her. She called for a sedan-chair, and was carried over. Now, the young lady who desired to follow the world, and go to heaven too, was afraid to trust her own judgment on the subject of dancing. She feared the tottering arch might give way, and she be lost forever. To make all safe, she added to the weight of her own chance of error the additional chances of her human authority being wrong also.
— S. S. Times
Shows how love of costly fashion can reveal misplaced priorities over Christ and charity.
I have seen a woman, professing to love Christ more than the world, clad in a silk dress costing seventy-five dollars; making-up and trimmings of same, forty dollars; bonnet (or apology for one), thirty-five dollars; velvet mantle, one hundred and fifty dollars; diamond ring, five hundred dollars; watch, chain, pin, and other trappings, four hundred and fifty dollars: total, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars,—all hung upon a frail, dying woman. I have seen her, at a meeting in behalf of homeless wanderers in New York, wipe her eyes upon an expensive embroidered handkerchief at the story of their sufferings, and, when the contribution-box came round, take from a well-filled porte-monnaie, of costly workmanship, twenty-five cents to aid the society formed to promote their welfare. Ah! thought I: dollars for ribbons, and pennies for Christ.
From a Sermon.
Depicts the fleeting and absurd fate of worldly fashion even in nature's creatures.
It was formerly the custom, that, when fashions were worn out at Paris, the milliners and dressmakers sent the antiquated articles to Russia and Sweden, with which countries the commerce of fashion was not the least important. A vessel laden with such merchandise was once run down in the channel of St. Petersburg. Next day, a salmon was caught in the Neva, dressed in a white satin gown; in the same net were found two large cod-fish, nearly enveloped in muslin handkerchiefs: and it was supposed that many a shark and porpoise was dressed in robes of the latest fashion, which had been intended for the fair ladies of St. Petersburg. Percy.
Contrasts small church giving with large spending on fashion, exposing greed and misplaced priorities.
A woman gave five cents at a collection, and then complained of the frequency of these calls. The same week, she paid twenty dollars for a fashionable bonnet for one of her daughters. Another gave three cents at a missionary collection, and the next day many dollars for a new pair of ear-rings. A church-member had nothing to give for church extension, but spent, the same season, many hundred dollars at a fashionable watering-place for personal pleasure in the service of fashion.
Humorously traces the origin of fashion to worldly and even evil influences.
An old Scotch preacher is reported to have said, in one of his sermons at Aberdeen, "Ye people of Aberdeen get your fashions from Glasgow, and Glasgow from Edinburgh, and Edinburgh from London, and London from Paris, and Paris from the Devil."
Abusing money by hoarding or exalting it leads to personal and social harm.
To hoard money is to abuse it. To make the possession of money the chief basis of social preference is to abuse money. Money cannot make a lady nor a gentleman. A leper may put on jewels; but a jewelled leper is a leper still. Money is abused when lifted above its sphere. To stake our happiness on the possession of a certain amount of money, or on the incessancy of accumulation, is unduly to exalt money. Money is abused when pursued by means that are evil in themselves or injurious in their effects, and when it is so employed as inevitably to inflict personal and social mischief.
— S. Martin
Novel reading can become a harmful habit distracting from thirst for God's Word.
A Christian lady, who, unfortunately, formed the habit of novel-reading at an early age, says, "I could make any earthly sacrifice could I thirst after the Bible as I have after novels. The greatest daily cross I am called to take up is to pass by a novel without reading it. I would say as a warning to all my sex, Beware of this fatal rock; beware of wasting not only days but nights to make yourselves fools all the rest of your days, if not absolutely."
Novels teach false ideals, causing youth to despise real blessings from God.
NOVELS, Influence of Goldsmith, himself a novel-writer, says, "Above all, never let your son touch a novel or romance. How delusive, how destructive, are these features of consummate bliss! They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness that never existed, to despise the little good that Fortune has mixed in our cnp, by expecting more than she ever gave."
Most novels do great harm despite some instructive fiction, deserving to be destroyed.
NOVELS, Mischief of I have often maintained that fiction may be much more instructive than real history. I think so still; but, viewing the vast rout of novels as they are, I do think they do incalculable mischief. I wish we could collect them all together, and make one vast fire of them. I should exult to see the smoke of them ascend like that of Sodom and Gomorrah: the judgment would be as just. J. Foster.
Modern novels are empty fantasies occupying unproductive minds with worthless stories.
They are tales of adventures which did not occur in God's creation, but only in the waste chambers (to be let unfurnished) of certain human heads, and which are part and parcel only of the sum of nothings; which, nevertheless, obtain some temporary remembrance, and lodge extensively, at this epoch of the world, in similar still more unfurnished chambers. Carlyle.
Early exposure to corrupt novels can ruin lives and lead to spiritual downfall.
A young man who recently committed suicide in Indiana ascribed his downfall to the influence of "the vilest kind of novels," which he was allowed to read when eight or nine years old. "If good books had been furnished me," he says, "and no bad ones, I should have read the good books with as great zest as I did the bad ones. Persuade all persons over whom you have any influence not to read novels," was his parting message to his brother. The chaplain of Newgate Prison in London, in his annual report to the lord-mayor, referring to many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, says that he discovered "that all these boys, without one exception, had been in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals which are now published for the alleged instruction and amusement of the youth of both sexes."
Habitual novel reading weakens the mind, stirs passions, and hinders spiritual growth.
Many works of fiction may be read with safety, some even with profit; but the constant familiarity even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves relaxes the mind that wants hardening, dissolves the heart that wants fortifying, stirs the imagination which wants quieting, irritates the passions which want calming, and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises. The habitual indulgence in such reading is a silent, mining mischief. Hannah More.
True pleasure requires paying the price before enjoyment; false pleasure costs after.
All pleasure must be bought at the price of pain. The difference between false and true is just this,—for the true, the price is paid before you enjoy it; for the false, after you enjoy it. J. Foster.
Worldly pleasures deceive like a mirage, promising happiness but leading to ruin.
The mirage has lured many to ruin by presenting false pictures of trees and streams in the desert; but the pleasures of the world have lured and cheated many more by visions of false happiness, whose cheat has often been confessed.
The theatre is a dangerous gateway to moral ruin and spiritual destruction.
I do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce the theatre to be one of the broadest avenues that lead to destruction; fascinating, no doubt it is, but, on that account, the more delusive and the more dangerous. Let a young man once acquire a taste for this species of entertainment, and yield himself up to its gratification, and he is in great danger of becoming a lost character, rushing upon his ruin. All the evils that can waste his property, corrupt his morals, blast his reputation, impair his health, imbitter his life, and destroy his soul, lurk in the purifices of a theatre. Vice, in every form, lives and moves, and has its being there. Myriads have cursed the hour when they first exposed themselves to the contamination of the stage. Light and darkness are not more opposed to ends other than the Bible and the play-book. If the one be good, the other must be evil. If the Scriptures are to be obeyed, the theatre must be avoided. The only way to justify the stage, as it is, as it has ever been, as it is ever likely to be, is to condemn the Bible: the same individual cannot defend both. Hannah More.
People often forget the regret of thinking about theatre at death's approach.
A lady in company was once speaking of the pleasures of going to the theatre. First, there was the pleasure of thinking of the scenes which were to be acted before going; secondly, the pleasures of witnessing them when there; thirdly, the pleasures of remembering them after they were over. An old gentleman who heard the remarks observed, "There is one pleasure which you have forgotten."—"What is that?" inquired the lady. "The pleasure of thinking of the theatre when you come to die."—"Ah!" said the lady, "I never took that into the calculation."
One should not attend places where they would be unwilling to die.
Some years ago, two ministers were walking in front of the Old Park Theatre. One of them said to the other, who was Rev. Dr. Charles Hall, "I was never in a theatre in my life; and I want to go once and see a tragedy performed by a great actor: I want to see and hear what constitutes the power of the stage." To this Dr. Hall replied, "I would like to see the same thing; but I have made up my mind never to go to any place where I would be unwilling to die. Now, I should be very sorry to die while seeing a play in a theatre."
Better to face worldly temptations boldly than to complain in weakness.
A Christian had better go to the theatre than to go home whining because he can't go. If it is worth while to do any thing for Christ, it is worth while to do it with your head up, and with your whole heart. Beecher.
Excessive drinking leads to violence and instability in society and religion.
"Mahomet is said to have been led to put the prohibition against the use of wine, in the Koran, by an incident which occurred to himself. Passing through a village one day, he was delighted at the merriment of a crowd of persons enjoying themselves with drinking at a wedding party—but being obliged to return by the same way next morning, he was shocked to see the ground, where they had been, drenched with blood, and, asking the cause, he was told that the company had drunk to excess, and, getting into a brawl, fell to slaughtering each other. From that day his mind was made up,—the mandate went forth from Allah, that no child of the faithful should touch wine, on pain of being shut out from the joys of Paradise. The simple truth we suppose to be, that Mahomet foresaw there would be no stability to the religion and empire he was building up, if the use of ardent spirits was permitted to his followers."
Excessive love of dress can lead to financial ruin and debt even for godly families.
"It is a lamentable fact," says the author of the 'Wife and Mother,' that at the present day, there are hundreds of bankrupts or tradesmen on the very verge of bankruptcy, or persons of limited income in embarrassed circumstances, whose difficulties have originated in the fondness of their wives for dress and display, and some of these wives, women professing godliness! Not very long since, a professional man, with an income, perhaps of from two to three hundred a year, on which to support himself, a wife, and one child, was arrested for debt. The stir thus occasioned brought to light his general circumstances, when it appeared, that he owed about twelve hundred pounds, more than half that sum being due to mercers, milliners, and jewellers, for his wife's finery."
Gamblers betting on a dead man's condition illustrate heartlessness and sin's callousness.
Well did Dr. Nott say, "The finished gambler has no heart—he would play at his brother's funeral—he would gamble upon his mother's coffin." Horace Walpole mentions an anecdote of a man having in his time dropped down dead at the door of White's club house, into which he was carried; the members of the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not; and upon its being proposed to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, alleging that it would effect the fairness of the bet.
Theatre is condemned as a school of vice and corruption, even by an infidel philosopher.
The infidel philosopher Rousseau declared himself to be of the opinion, that the theatre is in all cases a school of vice. Though he has himself written for the stage, yet, when it was proposed to establish a theatre in the city of Geneva, he wrote against the project, with zeal and great force, and expressed the opinion, that every friend of pure morals ought to oppose it! Alas! that which infidelity has condemned as a fruitful source of corruption and shame, is publicly advocated and patronized in our midst—yea, more: vindicated and patronized by some professing godliness.
"It is impossible, says Rousseau, "that an establishment [the Theatre at Geneva] so contrary to our ancient manners, can be generally applauded. How many generous citizens will see, with indignation, this monument of luxury and effeminacy raise itself upon the ruins of our ancient simplicity! Where would be the imprudent mother who would dare to carry her daughter to this dangerous school? And what respectable woman would not think herself dishonored in going there? In all countries the profession of a player is dishonorable, and those who exercise it are every where condemned."
Refusing theatre attendance shows rejecting worldly pleasures for true satisfaction in Christ.
Dr. Rush was a great enemy to theatrical amusements. He was once in conversation with a lady, a professor of religion, who was speaking of the pleasure she anticipated at the theatre, in the evening. "What, madam," said he, "do you go to the theatre?" "Yes," was the reply: "and don't you go, doctor?" "No, madam," said he, "I never go to such places." "Why, sir, do you not go? Do you think it sinful?" said she. He replied, "I never will publish to the world that I think Jesus Christ a hard master, and religion an unsatisfying portion, which I should do if I went on to the devil's ground in quest of happiness." This argument was short, but conclusive. The lady determined not to go.
A comic actor confessed acting led him to serve the devil, showing the theatre's spiritual danger.
A celebrated comic performer on the English stage, retiring from London for a short time on account of ill-health, and meeting with a pious friend whom he had once intimately known, said, "I have been acting Sir John Falstaff so often, that I thought I should have died; and had I died, it would have been in the service of the devil." The testimony of a player against himself.
Early American Congress urged suppressing theatres as sources of idleness and moral decay.
The American Congress, soon after the Declaration of Independence, passed the following motion:
"Whereas, true religion and good morals are the only foundation of public liberty and happiness,
Resolved, that it be, and hereby is, earnestly recommended to the several states, to take the most effectual measures for the encouragement thereof, and for the suppression of theatrical entertainments, horse-racing, gaming, and such other diversions as are productive of idleness, dissipation, and a general depravity of principles and manners.
Historic Christian and pagan authorities uniformly condemned the theatre as morally corrupting.
William Prynne, a satirical and pungent writer, who suffered many cruelties for his admirable productions in the time of Charles I, has made a catalogue of authorities against the stage, which contains every name of eminence in the heathen and Christian world: it comprehends the united testimony of the Jewish and Christian Churches; the deliberate acts of fifty-four ancient and modern, general, national, and provincial councils and synods, both of the Western and Eastern churches, the condemnatory sentence of seventy-one ancient Fathers, and one hundred and fifty modern popish and Protestant authors; the hostile endeavors of philosophers and even poets; with the legislative enactments of a great number of pagan and Christian states, nations, magistrates, emperors and princes.
A theatre advocate ironically depended on theatre pins for food, exposing its moral and social cost.
There was a poor gentleman in Paris, who used to go powdered and decorated with ruffles and ribbons. He happened to be in a company where were even some of morals so stern that they questioned the utility of the theatres with which Paris abounds. At that time, they had twenty-one in that city, and they were opened every evening, not excepting the Sabbath. This ruffled gentleman, in a long harangue, undertook to show that the theatres were a great public benefit. And he used arguments often urged by advocates of similar public nuisances. There were the thousands of actors, scene-makers, candle-lighters, hack-drivers, footmen, printers, &c. &c., whose mouths were daily supplied with bread by these establishments. He grew warm, and, in a manner, eloquent. He could not deny but thousands had their morals corrupted, their hopes crushed, their property lost, and their hearts broken, in consequence of these sinks of vice. Still, he pleaded in their behalf as if for life. After he had withdrawn, and the company were musing on his arguments and vehemence, a gentleman remarked that their eloquent friend had good reason for his opinions—for he spent all his small pension in going to the play, but staid every night till the play-house was cleared, and then went round in the ladies' boxes, and picked up pins enough to buy his food till the next play!
# 412. TC
Avoid places you'd be ashamed to die from; a test for Christian entertainment choices.
Two professors of religion were standing at the door of a theatre in the city of New-York, when one of them proposed to go in and see the play, and desired his friend to accompany him. The other declined the invitation; and after being repeatedly solicited to enter, gave this excellent reason for his refusal: "If I should go in, and while there be called into eternity, and should be asked at the door of heaven where I had come from, I should be ashamed to answer."
This incident furnishes a rule for general observance: Never go to a place where you would be ashamed to die."
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