The Bosom Sin | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1858

The Bosom Sin.

WE have known persons who were kept from submission to God for many years by an unwillingness to give up a single sin, or to perform a single duty. All the opposition of the natural heart centered on that one point, and they would not yield it. They sought to evade the cross. They struggled hard to come into the kingdom of heaven instead of entering in through Christ, the door. But all efforts were in vain. A heart-searching God would not be mocked, and at length broken-hearted and humbled, the sin was abandoned, and the duty performed, and in a moment the darkened soul was full of joy and peace. The necessity of abandoning the bosom sin is forcibly set forth in the following paragraph:

It scarcely matters whether the sin be small or great. It may be some passion, or habit, or interest, which holds but a small place in our lives, and may by the world be unmarked. If it exists with us, and we know it, no matter what otherwise may be our virtues, this one bosom sin will finally palsy our whole moral being. That one loose plank may sink the mightiest ship that ever floated on the seas. A man's first step onward must be over this sin of which he is conscious. It may be but taking a mote of the eye, it may be but cutting off the right hand, but that sin must be put away, or he will stand still in the christian course. And worse than this. Through the implications of society and habit, through the love of consistency, one such sin retaining its mastery, may drag the whole character down to its own level. If one purposes generally to be a good man, this sin will constantly recur to him, and will bring perpetual self-reproach. The thought of moral or religious progress will come to be associated with conquest over it. All else is easy. There must be the place of struggle, and if he fail there, he yields up and is dispirited and lost. It is as with an army in battle. There is almost always some point which is the key to the whole position, the loss of which decides the contest. It may be an eminence which the husbandman hardly observes as he passes over it with his plough. But around it the battle rages. There the veterans of a hundred fights are planted never to retreat. The artillery of an empire is pointed to sweep it with its iron hail, and squadron to squadron press on and are lost in the midst of the waving tempest of fire. Every where else the strife is nothing. The embattled rank pause to witness how on that point goes the day. If the position is lost, from rank to rank, from squadron to squadron, follow dismay, and flight, and disaster. Such a contest must go on in the heart of every man who desires to be a christian, and yet has reserved some bosom sin as an exception to his christian life. That is the key to his character. If he finally yield there, and surrender so much of his character up to evil, he will be enfeebled, the next point to contest will be yielded, and finally nothing will be left but the show of such virtues as interest or the community exact of him.—Sel.