p. 142 | A Ruling Sin

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 18, 1868

A Ruling Sin.

There are many sins which have this absorbing character; whose property it is ever to encroach more and more on the regions of the moral and spiritual life, not as yet possessed by them, never content until they have reared their trophies on the wreck and ruin of every nobler faculty and power. All sins, perhaps, have more or less this character. Yet we may signalize two or three concerning which it is eminently true.

Vanity is such a sin. This may seem to us often little worse than a foible; yet physicians will tell you that there is almost no sin which gives more inmates to the mad-house than this; and how many through it shall have missed the crown of life, only the last day shall declare.

The Love of Money is another such sin, growing by what it feeds on; and even claiming to exercise a wider, a fiercer, a more relentless tyranny and dominion in the soul where it rules as lord; ever resenting more and more any freedom of action, any generosity in dealing, any open-handedness in giving, any bowels of compassion shown on the part of him who meant indeed to allow this sin, but did not intend at first that it should bear sway in his heart or life, as sole and absolute and tyrannous lord.

The Lust of the Flesh, indulged and allowed, proves oftentimes another such a sin; it has a fearful tendency to become such; what a workshop of unholy, impure fancies will the heart of man be who has given himself over to the spirit of uncleanness? “Keep thy servant from presumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over me.”—Trench.