Religious Scolding

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 19, 1882

Religious Scolding.

THERE is truth in the following extract, which is worthy of consideration :—

"No man was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, as corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows angry if it be not treated with some management and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear, perhaps, to be stroked, though he will growl even under the operation ; but if you touch him roughly, he will bite. There is no grace that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success than a religious zeal. A man thinks he is fighting for Christ, but is fighting for his own notions. He thinks he is skillfully searching the hearts of others, when he is only gratifying the malignity of his own, and charitably supposes his hearers destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more in his own eyes by the comparison. One thing, in the meantime, is certain : the folly and feuds of the professed disciples of the gospel, have been more dangerous to its interests, than all the avowed hostilities of its adversaries."