Innocence and Virtue

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 9, 1873

Innocence and Virtue

Innocence is not virtue, and those who fancy that it is make a fatal mistake. Innocence is simply the ignorance of evil; virtue knows it, appreciates it, rejects it. Infancy is lovely in its innocence, but life, with its stern realities, demands the strong, ripened rigor of manly virtue to resist its evil, to protect its good, to build up character, and to bless the world.

The Religious Herald says the “confessional” is already established in most of the Protestant churches in this neighborhood. They are quite inclined to confess to their ministers the faults of other people, but have not much usually to say about their own.