Manners and Morals

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 4, 1871

Manners and Morals.

MANNERS easily and rapidly mature into morals. As childhood advances to manhood, the transition from bad manners to bad morals is almost imperceptible. Vulgar and obscene forms of speech keep vulgar and obscene objects before the mind, engender impure images in the imagination, and make unlawful desires prurient. From the prevalent state of the mind, actions proceed, as water rises from a fountain. Hence, what was originally only a word or phrase, becomes a thought, is meretriciously embellished by the imagination, is enflamed into a vicious desire, gains strength and boldness by being always made welcome, until at last, under some urgent temptation, it dares, for once to put on the visible form of action; it is then ventured upon again and again, more frequently and less warily, until repetition forges the chain of habit, and then language, imagination, desire, and habit, bind their victim in the prison-house of sin. In this way profane language wears away the reverence for things sacred and holy; and a child who has been allowed to follow, and mock, and hoot, at an intemperate man in the streets, is far more likely to become intemperate himself than if he had been accustomed to regard him with pity, as a fallen brother, and with sacred abhorrence, as one self-brutified or demonized. So, on the other hand, purity and chasteness of language tend to preserve purity and chasteness of thought and of taste; they repel licentious imaginings; they delight in the unsullied and untainted, and all their tendencies and aptitudes are on the side of virtue.—Sel.