p. 8 | SHAME | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1897

SHAME

Shame is a kind of social conscience. Shame is a secondary sense of sin. In shame our imagination becomes a kind of moral sense. In the present disorder of our souls we are all acutely ashamed of many things that are not the proper objects of shame at all; while, on the other hand, we feel no shame at all at multitudes of things that are most blameworthy, dishonorable and contemptible. We are ashamed of things in our lot and in our circumstances that, if we only knew it, are our opportunity and our honor; we are ashamed of things that are the clear will and immediate dispensation of Almighty God. And, then, we feel no shame at all at the most dishonorable things, and that simply because the men around us are too coarse in their morals, and too dull in their sensibilities, to see any shame in such things. And thus it comes about that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shame remains in them a constant snare and source of temptation. A man of fine nature feels keenly the temptation to shrink from those paths of truth and duty that expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse and scandalizing attacks of public and private enemies.—Alexander Whyte, D.D.