Sound Words by A. L. Morris

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 23, 1873

Sound Words.

By A. L. Morris

The best things when abused become the worst; there is no devil like a fallen angel; no enemy to gospel like an apostate Christian; no hate like the “theological hate;” no war like a religious war; and no corruption like religious corruption. The reasons are not far to seek. The best things are the strongest things: they can do, most always, most evil when used in an evil way. Bad men know this. Simon the magician was not the only one that has cast a covetous look at Christianity, and said, “Give me also this power.” Further, the best things when abused have a natural tendency to exceed in evil. When men who have reached a certain point of evil go rapidly to a great excess of iniquity, outraging propriety, and thus startle superficial observers of their race, one reason is the memory and sense of lost good. There is a distressing self-consciousness, a painful presence of righteousness, which haunts the wrong-doer, and no ordinary sinfulness will suffice in such a case. The thing is to drown moral feeling, to keep the man from himself, and to endeavor by force to suppress reproving recollections and rebuking convictions; and an extravagance of sin is needful for this. Much surprising vice is really the tribute which unruly passions pay to moral excellence. And so it is with the abuse of religion. When perverted to evil its very purity tempts, or forces, to kinds and modes of mischief peculiar to itself. Only a bold and unblushing heart can manage to defend itself from its rebukes. It is the swearer, half ashamed of himself, lifting his voice higher, and pouring out more terrific oaths; it is the drunkard, seeking, in beastly intoxication, refuge from remorse; it is the once gentle possessor of purity, attempting a vain relief from anguish by awful violations of all that was once loved and cherished.

Good, when abused, greatly hardens and benumbs moral feeling. The very practice of checking its natural impulses and stifling its voice makes men bad at a faster rate than the mere doing of wrong. For it is not the commission of evil that corrupts and indurates the soul as much as the repressing of good.—A. L. Morris.