A Dangerous Proverb by Rev. T. L. Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 18, 1882

A Dangerous Proverb.

By Rev. T. L. Cuyler

"Never too late to mend" is a very popular, but a very dangerous proverb. It is true and serviceable under certain circumstances. If one who has wandered off into the wrong path is penitent, and really longs and labors to get right again, then it is an encouragement to assure him that it is not too late for him to "mend his ways."

But on the face of it, this homely apothegm is too often an incentive to presumption. A young man of warm blood, who has a bagful of wild oats to sow, is tempted to give free rein to his passion, and says to himself, "It will never be too late to mend;" so he scatters his wild oats broadcast, in the theater, on the race-course, and in every line of "sporting life." They come up rank and tall, and cover the whole soil of his life with their long, ugly roots and their hateful stalks. The critical years of his brief existence are seeded down with sin, and if in after years he begins to weed out the devil's crop, he finds the soil impoverished, and the roots hard to clear out, and only a fraction of life left for any better, nobler, and holier crop of good deeds. The chances are that the wild oats will get an ineradicable hold upon him, and then all total crops which he grows in this world will be fuel for the flames of perdition. Young man! I offer you a thousand-times better motto; it is, "Never too early to mend." Try that.

In no direction has the proverb that I am condemning worked more mischief than in encouraging young men to tamper with a wine-bottle. If we go to a genial, warm-hearted, convivial youth, and tell him frankly that he is in the rapids, and rushing toward the cataract of ruin, he will coolly reply, "Don't you worry about me. When I find out it's hurting me, I'll quit; never too late to mend." Sir, that's the devil's lie. Millions of hard drinkers have struggled hard to extricate themselves from the torrent of appetite, when they saw the awful cataract just ahead, and heard its terrific thunders. But it was too late. Their appetite had become a disease; their will had become a mere rotten rope, with no staying power; they found out that it was easy to begin, and impossible to stop. Underneath the Niagara of drunkenness lie the myriads of victims of this fatal delusion - that a man can defy common sense, and defy God with impunity! I have a motto for every young man that I can guarantee-it is "never too early to mend" your conscience with the stout seam of a total abstinence pledge.—Rev. T. L. Cuyler.