Thought-Hives by T. L. Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 12, 1871

Thought-Hives.

By T. L. Cuyler

Every man we meet is a walking thought-hive. To our eye, it is hidden; but to God’s eye, it is a hive of transparent glass. For there is not a thought in our hearts, but lo! O Lord, thou knowest it altogether! The thoughts which nestle within us, and issue from us in language and in actions, determine our moral character. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

A man is known by the company he keeps. So the thoughts which we harbor within us, and which go out through the doors of our mouths and our hands, determine our real characters. A holy man gives house-room only to pure and noble and goodly thoughts, and he is constantly striving to bar up door and window against foul and wicked intruders; out of the treasure-house within him proceed all the beautiful deeds and white-winged words that are a blessing unto others.

Habitual thinking determines a man as either Christ’s or Satan’s. A sensualist is only a filthy thinker. The walls of his mind are hung around with lascivious pictures; his inmost soul is a brothel. Do a man’s thoughts run continually upon the bottle? Then he is a drunkard. Does another man’s thought-hive send out its winged messengers every hour to gather honey from God’s word, and his world of nature? Then is he a devout and happy being. In such a man, God dwelleth by his Spirit. One of the highest of spiritual luxuries is the enjoyment of pure and exhilarating and sublime thoughts. To such a devout and happy thinker, a prison would be a palace. “I thought of Jesus,” said holy Rutherford, “until every stone in the wall of my prison cell shone like a ruby.” Wherefore let us keep our hearts—our thought-hives—with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of our life. And no one can handle the pitch of a wicked, or obscene, or abominable thought for any considerable time, without being fatally defiled thereby.

There is no greater torment than to be an unclean, or an intensely selfish, or corrupt thinker; this is the genuine demoniac possession. Such a one is “grievously vexed with a devil.” To go through some men’s hearts would be like a walk through Sing Sing penitentiary. Every room has a rascal in it. Out of such hearts proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, covetousness, pride, blasphemy. What a hell in advance, to be doomed to live in such a habitation of the devil! All thoughts have their germs. The surest way to kill a sin is to kill it in the egg. At the very moment when a wicked thought is born, is the right time to strangle it. These little snakes soon become the anacondas that strangle conscience and destroy character. How important, too, is the nursing into active life and strength of every good and holy suggestion and aspiration. A noble career depends on the treatment given to the infant ideas that are born in the soul. The best of these are the direct product of the Holy Spirit. To quench a good thought is to “quench the Spirit;” and the everlasting damnation of millions has been the result of this very sin against the infinite love.—T. L. Cuyler.