GOING IN BAD COMPANY by J. CLARKE

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1860

GOING IN BAD COMPANY.

By J. CLARKE

Solomon the wise man has asserted that, “he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Prov. xi, 20.

What should we think of the person who would go in the company of drunkards and gamblers, and when remonstrated with on the practice, should answer, “I frequent the gambling saloon in order to get strength to resist the temptations to drunkenness; and I visit the brothel in order to get a greater dislike to impurity, and to strengthen my love of virtue; and I attend theaters, shows and public gatherings generally, in order to increase my hatred to worldly objects, and to attain to greater heavenly-mindedness. “I reason,” he continues, “thus, by seeing all kinds of vice, and contrasting them with virtue, I am encouraged to go on in pursuit of good.” Thus reasons neighbor Know-nothing.

All who have any acquaintance with human nature, will at once distrust the professions of neighbor Know-nothing, and will say inwardly that if he truly hated the ways of the transgressor, he would not be so fond of his company.

But neighbor Know-nothing is not more inconsistent than those who, having left Babylon, her creeds and her papal sabbaths, her lewd practices and abominations, and having protested loudly against them, do still attend their assemblies, and listen to their preaching, and when you remonstrate, say, “O I get strength by hearing their strange contradictions.”

A Christian may be forced to enter a gambling house to obtain the dead body of a ruined acquaintance; so you may be forced to listen to lies when performing the last burial rites of your friend; but to attend upon the ministration of error needlessly, is as dangerous and as preposterous as for neighbor Know-nothing to frequent bad company to strengthen his love for good. J. CLARKE.