p. 187 | Moths in the Candle by Dr. J. G. Holland

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 8, 1874

Moths in the Candle.

By Dr. J. G. Holland

EVERY moth learns for itself that the candle burns. Every night, while the candle lasts, the slaughter goes on, and leaves its wingless and dead around it. The light is beautiful, and warm, and attractive; and, unscared by the dead, the foolish creatures rush into the flames, and drop, hopelessly singed, their little lives despoiled.

It has been supposed that men have reason and a moral sense. It has been supposed that they observe, draw conclusions, and learn by experience. Indeed, they have been in the habit of looking down upon the animal world as a group of inferior beings, and as subjects of commiseration on account of their defenselessness; yet there is a large class of men, reproduced by every passing generation, that do exactly what the moths do, and die exactly as the moths die. They learn nothing by observation or experience. They draw no conclusions, save those which are fatal to themselves. Around a certain class of brilliant temptations they gather, night after night, and with singed wings or lifeless bodies, they strew the ground around them. No instructions, no expostulations, no observation of ruin, no sense of duty, no remonstrances of conscience, have any effect upon them. If they were moths, in fact, they could not be sillier or more obtuse. They are, indeed, so far under the domination of their animal natures that they act like animals, and sacrifice themselves in flames that the world's experience has shown to be fatal.

A single passion, which need not be named—further than to say that when hallowed by love and a legitimate gift of life to life, it is as pure as any passion of the soul—is one of the candles around which the human moths lie in myriads of disgusting deaths. If anything has been proved by the observation and experience of the world, it is that licentiousness, and all illicit gratifications of the passions involved in it, are killing sins against a man's own nature; that by it the wings are singed not only, but body and soul are degraded and spoiled. Out of all illicit indulgence come weakness, a perverted moral nature, degradation of character, gross beastliness, benumbed sensibilities, a disgusting life, and a disgraceful death. Before its baleful fire the sanctity of womanhood fades away, the romance of life dies, and the beautiful world loses all its charms. The lives wrecked upon the rock of sensuality are strewn in every direction. Again and again, with endless repetition, young men yield to the song of the siren that beguiles them to their death. They learn nothing, they see nothing, they know nothing, but their wild desire, and on they go to destruction and the devil.

Every young man who reads this article has two lives before him. He may choose either. He may throw himself away on a few illegitimate delights, which cover his brow with shame in the presence of his mother, and become an old man before his time, with all the wine drained out of his life; or he may grow up in a pure, strong manhood, held in healthy relation to all the joys that pertain to that estate. He may be a beast in his heart, or he may have a wife whom he worships, children whom he delights in, a self-respect which enables him to meet unabashed the noblest woman, and an undisputed place in good society. He may have a dirty imagination, or one that hates and spurns all impurity as both disgusting and poisonous. In brief, he may be a man, with a man's powers and immunities, or the sham of a man—a whited sepulcher—conscious that he carries with him his own dead bones, and all uncleanness. It is a matter entirely of choice. He knows what one life is, and where it ends. He knows the essential quality and certain destiny of the other. The man who says he cannot control himself not only lies, but places his Maker in blame. He can control himself, and, if he does not, he is both a fool and a beast. The sense of security, and purity, and self-respect that come of continence, entertained for a single day, is worth more than the illicit pleasures of a world for all time. The pure in heart see God in everything, and see him everywhere, and they are supremely blest.—Dr. J. G. Holland; Scribner's for October.