A FALSE BELIEF NO EXCUSE.
THE most common, and yet the most shallow of all excuses for a wrong course of life is, that it consists with the individual's belief. Many seem to thing that after a life of sin they shall, on this plea, be justified at the last day; and no appeals that are now made to their conscience in behalf of the truth or right, can be admitted; because, they tell us, they are of another persuasion. They really believe in Deism, Pantheism, Atheism, or in some thing else equally exclusive of all religious obligation, so they feel safe and justified in repelling every appeal to reason or conscience. They think, that if they should in the end be found in a mistake as to their particular belief, it will be all the same; for then it will be enough for them to plead, that they really believed what they did, and that their way seemed right to them. The truth is, the tempter, in dealing with our understanding, always presents some seeming truth. His object is to color falsehood into a likeness to the truth, that he may deceive. The tempter's bait is always some apparent good. In every case the human will chooses in view of some apparent good. And never does one deliberately commit a sin, till he has made it seem to himself, that on the whole, it is best to do it any more than one adopts an error, till it seems to him to be true. The fact therefore, that a man's understanding has been abused by a heart seduced to make that seem true which was even shockingly false, is no justification for wrong thinking or wrong doing. For one never sins till his reason so bends to some delusion as to make it seem good to sin. The whole art of Satan's temptations consists in making evil seem to be good. God denounces his woe on this very wickedness of making the false seeming out of which all sin and error comes. He says, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness.” For one to say that the evil seemed good, is only saying that his understanding joined with his will in the sin. The forbidden fruit seemed good to our mother Eve. Intoxicated by the false seeming, “She plucked, she ate;
Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe;
That all was lost.”—Puritan Recorder.