e
inevitable temptation arising from this other conjunction of
circumstances, the occasion is only remote.

Thus, since danger in moral matters is nearly always relative; what is
a remote occasion for one may be a proximate occasion for another.
Proneness to evil is not the same in us all, for we have not all the
same temperament and the same virtue. Two individuals may assist at a
ball or a dance or a play, the one secure from sin, immune against
temptation, the other a manifold victim of his or her folly. The dance
or spectacle may not be bad in itself, it is not bad in fact for one,
it is positively evil for the other and a near occasion of sin.

Remote occasions cannot always be avoided, they are so numerous and
frequent; besides the evil they contain is a purely imaginative, and
therefore negligible, quantity. There may be guilt however, in seeking
such occasions and without reason exposing ourselves to their possible
dangers; temerity is culpable; he that loves danger shall perish.

With the other kind, it is different. The simple fact of embracing a
proximate occasion of sin is a grievous fault, even in the event of our
accidentally not succumbing to the temptation to which we are exposed.
There is an evil in such rashness independent of its consequences. He
therefore who persists in visiting a place where there is every
facility for sinning and where he has frequently sinned, does a deed of
crime by going there; and whatever afterwards occurs, or does not
occur, affects that crime not in the least. The same is true of reading
certain books, novels and love-stories, for people of a certain
spiritual complexion. The same is true of company-keeping,
street-walking, familiarity and loose conversation. Nor can anything
different be said of such liberties, consented to or merely tolerated,
as embracing and kissing, amorous effusions and all perilous amusements
of this nature. When experience shows these things to be fraught with
danger, then they become sinful in themselves, and can be indulged in
only in contempt of the law of God and to our own serious spiritual
detriment.

But suppose I cannot avoid the occasion of sin, cannot remove it. What
then?

If it is a clear case of proximate occasion of sin, and all means fail
to change it, then the supposition of impossibility is a ridiculous
one. It is paramount to asserting that sin and offense of God is
sometimes necessary; and to talk thus is to talk nonsense. S