p. 757 | Comfort to Sodom

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 17, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 48.

Comfort to Sodom.

THAT was a most significant charge which God, by the prophet Ezekiel, brought against the Jews, that they were a comfort to Sodom, though they were the recognized people of God. Eze. 16: 48-54. In various ways we may be a comfort to the wicked.

1. By preserving silence when we ought to rebuke their wrong-doing. Their consciences reprove them, and, knowing our profession, they expect from us reproof. If we look on and do not speak, we are regarded as not disapproving, and the inference is comforting.

2. By ridiculing or denouncing in their presence those Christians who are endeavoring to live above the common level of practical godliness, urging such terms as "bigotry" and "spiritual pride."

3. By doing things which perhaps are not necessarily sinful, but which border so closely on the sinful as to encourage the wicked to go a little further. They see that we are willing to go as far as we can and not expose ourselves to church censure, and they infer that we would keep even pace with them if we could with safety.

4. By indulgences which the non-professing cannot see to be different in principle from their own loved gratifications. "If you Christians," they say, "can dance in a parlor gathering of fifty, why may not we dance in a ball-room party of two hundred? If you can find pleasure in private theatricals, why may we not find pleasure in public theaters? If we are in the high school of vice, it is because we were educated in your primary schools."

5. Many a sinner with a disturbed conscience has been comforted by hearing professors, on their way from the house of God, indulge in severe criticisms upon the preaching or the preacher.

6. By a worldly mindedness that allows the wicked to perceive no difference between them and us. "Your love of money, your pride of life, your style of living, your passion for show, are apparently just like ours. We see no difference. What do you more than others?"—Sel.