MORE WEAK THAN WICKED by Silas P. Mason

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 11, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 10.

"MORE WEAK THAN WICKED."

By Silas P. Mason

Nobody ever thought that Steve Morgan was a bad boy. To be sure, Steve had been caught in several scrapes of a decidedly compromising character, but they were generally overlooked, because "Steve is so easily influenced by bad boys." And so it was, that when Steve betrayed his trust, and appropriated various small sums, aggregating nearly eighty dollars, of his employer's money, everybody was astonished to the greatest degree.

Now, I want to show the fallacy of their reasoning, the reason that they not only should not have been surprised, but that they should, to a certain extent, have been expecting just such an outcome. When our friend Steve, who is a good example of a large, and, I am inclined to say, growing class of young men and boys,—when he committed his first offense against the laws of common honesty, instead of being promptly punished and reprimanded, advised of the wrongness of his behavior, of the utter outrageousness of his conduct, what little punishment he received was more than counteracted by some such phrase as that which stands at the head of this article, and he was thus led to look upon his punishment as a kind of martyrdom, and his crime as a mere peccadillo to be repeated at pleasure, if he were not guilty of being found out. Because, "everybody knew that he didn't mean anything bad; he was only a little weak and foolish, and perhaps unduly influenced by associates of a little looser morals than himself." Right here I want to say that this very fact that he was so easily influenced was a more cogent reason that his every wrong act should have been strictly punished instead of excused. As a result of this pernicious doctrine, his escapades became of more and more frequent occurrence, of more and more reckless character, and finally culminated in an act which drove him, a criminal outcast, from home.

Parents, guardians, friends, do not help the boys downward to a life of hardened sin and criminality by condoning their faults, and excusing their boyish escapades, because "the boy isn't bad at heart, only a little weak and foolish, not wicked." A boy, seeing that his parents and friends overlook his peccadillos in this manner, soon learns to regard them with complacency himself, and when his moral senses become so blunted that he can commit small (?) sins without compunction, then the progress is easy, and by rapid stages, to absolute criminality. Many a man is today serving out his long term in the penitentiary, many a one sleeping in an unhallowed grave, brought there by his own sinfulness, and all because he was not properly checked when he began to sow his wild oats. And I believe that a just God will hold the parents or guardian of such a one to strict accountability for neglecting the golden opportunities of leading that young life into a higher, nobler sphere of existence, and of guarding that precious soul from the perils that environ young men.

Teach your sons that the slightest deviation from God's law is sin, and that the wages of sin (which does not mean some sins, but all sins) is death; and not that the petty, popular vices of our young men are necessary experiences through which every young man has to pass before he can take his position as a useful and respectable member of society, and I will guarantee that the number of well-to-do, respectable young men who astonish their friends by some act that places them under the ban of the law will decrease in a very perceptible degree. Someone has well said that "a good man gone wrong is usually a bad man found out;" and so it is with these young men of whom I have been speaking—not bad naturally, but with the "old father Adam" inherent in their natures, nursed under the names of various amiable weaknesses by weak and foolish parents and guardians, who believe that "every young man must sow his wild oats."

My Christian friends, you who are parents or guardians, do not err in this respect. While it may seem hard to hold them in check, you will be more than repaid in having your sons grow up ornaments of society, pillars of the church, and strong staves on which to lean in your old age; veritable blessings to the circle in which they live, instead of blots on the escutcheons of otherwise honorable families, and living monuments of grace to the incapacity of parents or guardians.—Silas P. Mason, in the Examiner.