han he
who goes beyond theory into practice. This is something we frequently
forget, or would fain forget, the greed of passion blinding us more or
less voluntarily to the real moral value of our acts.
As a consequence of this self-illusion many a one finds himself far
beyond his depth in the sea of immorality before he fully realizes his
position. It is small beginnings that lead to lasting results; it is by
repeated acts that habits are formed; and evil grows on us faster than
most of us are willing to acknowledge. All manner of good and evil
originates in thought; and that is where the little monster of
uncleanness must be strangled before it is full-grown, if we would be
free from its unspeakable thralldom.
Again, this is a matter the malice and evil of which very, very rarely,
if ever, escapes us. He who commits a sin of impurity and says he did
not know it was wrong, lies deliberately, or else he is not in his
right frame of mind. The Maker has left in our souls enough of natural
virtue and grace to enable us to distinguish right and wrong, clean and
unclean; even the child with no definite knowledge of the matter,
meeting it for the first time, instinctively blushes and recoils from
the moral hideousness of its aspect. Conscience here speaks in no
uncertain accents; he alone does not hear who does not wish to hear.
Catholic theologians are even more rigid concerning the matter itself,
prescinding altogether from our perception of it. They say that here no
levity of matter is allowed, that is to say, every violation, however
slight, of either of these two commandments, is a sin. You cannot even
touch this pitch of moral defilement without being yourself defiled. It
is useless therefore to argue the matter and enter a plea of triviality
and inconsequence; nothing is trivial that is of a nature to offend God
and damn a soul.
Weakness has the same value as an excuse as it has elsewhere in moral
matters. Few sins are of pure malice; weakness is responsible for the
damnation of all, or nearly all, the lost. That very weakness is the
sin, for virtue is strength. To make this plea therefore is to make no
plea at all, for we are all weak, desperately weak, especially against
the demon of the flesh, and we become weaker by yielding. And we are
responsible for the degree of moral debility under which we labor just
as we are for the degree of guilt we have incurred.
Finally, as God, is no exceptor of persons, He do
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