p. 106 | The Enemy Indoors by Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1875

The Enemy Indoors.

By Cuyler

A FEW evenings since, Boston locked up her great warehouses, and went home to get ready for the Sabbath. No external danger alarmed her; no hostile fleet lay off her harbor; no enemy's batteries threatened her from Dorchester Heights, but a little secret seed of fire was nestling under one of her own roof-trees, which soon sprang into a horrible harvest of conflagration. Boston's enemy was within.

This is the physical illustration of the moral truth—a truth that quotes itself to me oftener than almost any other text in the Bible—“a man's foes shall be they of his own household.” This truth has a thousand applications. It applies literally to the domestic household. Where do most men find their greatest help or their greatest hindrance to success in their business? At home! Frugality there commonly means prosperity. Extravagance there commonly means vexation, temptation to business gambling, and to eventual ruin. Half the married men who practice swindling are pushed on to it by an extravagant wife and family. A man's wife is either his best friend or his worst enemy.

Where lies the sorest sorrow that disturbs the heart-peace and spoils all the luster of worldly gains or promotions? It is in the worm at the root of the home-life. It is nothing to a man to be prosperous in his store, or his office, or even in his pulpit, if he is wretched at his own hearthstone. Nor does the neglect or the social injustice of a whole neighborhood cut so deeply as the treachery or neglect of those nearest and dearest to us. A wife can bear to be ignored by all her neighbors if her husband is only loving and her children are affectionate and obedient. But a husband's unkindness is a dry sorrow that drinks her very heart's blood. Our severest wounds are often inflicted by the hands which ought to clasp our own the most closely. The betrayal of family secrets, the starting of damaging rumors, often proceed from some long, loose, limber tongue in our own household.

There, too, lurks the most frequent stumbling-block to religious improvement. The divine Teacher spoke about fathers being at variance with their own sons, and about mothers striving to keep their daughters out of his “kingdom.” Well, it is just as true now as it was then that one's spiritual “foes may be they of his own household.” A parent's piety is often reproduced in his children. But so are a father's habits or downright irreligion. Saying nothing about the hereditary taint of drunkenness and licentiousness, which often goes in the blood, there is a legacy of sin bequeathed by a father's example. In looking over my circle of acquaintance, I find that, while several good parents have bad children, there are not many prayerless, ungodly parents who have converted sons. The pull of the parents downward is too strong for the upward pull of the pulpit and the Sabbath-school.

If the father chiefly talks “money, money” at home, he generally rears a family in the worship of the almighty dollar. If fashion is the family altar, the children are offered up as victims upon that altar. If a man makes his own fireside attractive, he may reasonably hope to anchor his own children around it. My neighbor Q—— makes himself the constant evening companion of his boys. The result is that his boys are never found in bad places. But if a father hears the clock strike eleven in his club-house or the play-house, he need not be surprised if his boys hear it strike twelve in the gaming-room or the drinking-saloon. If he puts the bottle on his own table, he need not wonder if a drunken son staggers in, by and by, at his front door. When the best friend that childhood and youth ought to have becomes their foe, the home becomes the “starting-post” for moral ruin. A Godless house is a poor school to train up souls for Heaven.

What is true of the domestic household is equally and even more true of that inner household, the heart. The word of God likens a human being to a “tabernacle,” a “temple,” an “earthly house,” etc.; and it is no violence to compare the inmates of our own hearts to a “household.” What a curious family of faculties, thoughts, and affections is living inside of every one of us! An unconverted heart is a habitation of the evil one, with his brood of unholy desires, tastes and passions. Conversion is a spiritual house-cleaning. A genuinely renewed heart is a re-formed household, with Christ dwelling in it and controlling it. Out of the heart are “the issues of life;” yes, and of death. The only enemies that we ever need to be afraid of are within ourselves.

Did you ever know a good man or a pure woman utterly ruined by outside attacks upon their reputation? I never did. The abuse of a good man is commonly the head-wind that fans the fires of his own furnace, and gives him the greater headway. No true man was ever put down and kept down while he was true to conscience and to God. When character is destroyed, it is never murder; it is suicide. Kind reader, the only person in the universe that can put you down is one that lives in your own heart-house. If the living Jesus lives there and rules there, you are safe. You will be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

If your safety is from an indwelling Christ, so is your danger from indwelling sin. The “world” never harms a Christian so long as he keeps it out of his heart. Temptation is never dangerous until it has an inside accomplice. Sin within betrays the heart to the outside assailant. The reason why Joseph did not fall was because he kept the sin out of his soul. The reason why David did fall was that the sin within him ignited at the view of a wicked opportunity. The inward lust conceived and brought forth death.

There is a pretty sharp practical sermon in that old familiar fable of Æsop about the countryman who discovered the frozen snake in his field. There was no danger from that benumbed serpent while left out in the cold. But the foolish man carried it into his own house and laid it beside the fire. He domesticated it. And as soon as the reptile thawed out it began to slide about among the children, and to shoot in its deadly fang.

Ah! it is the snake that we bring into our hearts and warm there that stings us! Sin without us is harmless. Sin within us poisons and kills. Our foe is of our own household.

This is the scriptural way of putting the homely aphorism that “every one is his own worst enemy.” This truth often comes to my own door in the person of a broken-down creature, whose ill-flavored garments and bloated face are hanging out signals of distress. I knew him in his better days. He has a doleful story about “losing his situation,” and “having no friends,” and “everybody turning against him.” Poor victim of his own sin, he may well say that he has no friend when he is his own deadly enemy. His Almighty Friend in Heaven cannot help him so long as he determines to be his own destroyer. Even the loving Saviour of sinners will keep no man out of hell so long as he keeps a hell in his own depraved heart. Oh! there is no more pitiable spectacle on earth than that of the person who has exiled all of his best impulses, and all the best teachings of childhood, and has driven away the Spirit of God, and given up his soul to the dominion of the devil. Of such an one it is awfully true that “his house is left unto him desolate.”

Beware of yourselves. Watch your own heart-door. When you are tempted, imagine that you hear Satan trying at the latch. Slide in the bolt of prayer. The devil is harmless while locked out; it is only the indoor enemy that destroys the house. That heart alone is securely guarded for all eternity that has the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling within it and keeping the keys.—Cuyler.