at in
which they move, and without further investigation of facts to make
their induction good, they conclude that all men are like themselves;
that open profession of morality is unadulterated hypocrisy, that a
pure man is a living lie. A more wholesale impeachment of human
veracity and a more brutal indignity offered to human nature could
scarcely be imagined. Reason never argued thus; the heart has reasons
which the reason cannot comprehend. Truth to be loved needs only to be
seen. Adversely, it is the case with falsehood.

It is habitual with this passion to hide its hideousness under the
disguise of love, and thus this most sacred and hallowed name is
prostituted to signify that which is most vile and loathsome.
Depravity? No. Goodness of heart, generosity of affections, the very
quintessence of good nature! But God is love, and love that does not
see the image of the Creator in its object is not love, but the brutal
instinct.

There are some who do not go so far as to identify vice with virtue,
but content themselves with esteeming that, since passion is so strong,
virtue so difficult and God so merciful to His frail creatures, to
yield a trifle is less a sin than a confession of native weakness. This
"weakness" runs a whole gamut of euphemisms; imperfections, foibles,
frailties, mistakes, miseries, accidents, indiscretions--anything to
gloss it over, anything but what it is. At this rate, you could efface
the whole Decalogue and at one fell stroke destroy all laws, human and
divine. What is yielding to any passion but weakness? Very few sins are
sins of pure malice. If one is weak through one's own fault, and
chooses to remain so rather than take the necessary means of acquiring
strength, that one is responsible in full for the weakness. The weak
and naughty in this matter are plain, ordinary sinners of a very sable
dye.

Theirs is not the view that God took of things when He purged the earth
with water and destroyed the five cities with fire. From Genesis to the
Apocalypse you will not find a weakness against which He inveighs so
strongly, and chastises so severely. He forbids and condemns every
deliberate yielding, every voluntary step taken over the threshold of
moral cleanness in thought, word, desire or action.

The gravity and malice of sin is not to be measured by the fancies,
opinions, theories or attitude of men. The first and only rule is the
will of God which is sufficiently clear to anyone who sc