Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1859-09-03


Br TIMOTHY rircoNR.-vunBER TWENTY-FIVE.
at is dangerous playing with edged tools"
" He who avoids the temptation avoids the sim"
Desire beauties what is ugly"
aKeep yourself from opportunities and God will keep you
from sins"
aTho pitcher that goes often to the we'll gets broken
last"
There is an enchanted battle-ground be-
tween virtue and vice, where many soul
lives and feeds in secret, and takes its pay
ment for the restraint and modification of
its outward life. l once knew an old dog
whose most exalted and delighted life was
lived upon this charmed territory. The on
y brute tenants of the dwelling where lie
lived were himself and cat Rover bore
no i'll will toward his feline companion, -
in fact, be was too good natured to bear
i'll will toward anything. He had been de-
tected once or twice in worrying her, and
one or two severe hoggings had taught him
that the sport would not be tolerated.
Still he did not stop thinking about it; and
at every convenient opportunity he planted
himself in her way, watched her as she
lurked for prey, scared her with growls and
feints, and kept her in fever of apprehen-
sion and fretfulness. Now, while do not
believe that he intended her the slightest
mischief, have no doubt that, in his bloody
Imagination, he had slain her thousand
times, chased her sll over the neighborhood,
and torn her, limb from limb In short,
while he knew that he must not worry her,
he took the satisfaction that lay next to it
that of being tempted to worry her, and
found in the excitement Of this temptation
the highest rewards of his selfdenal.
Humanity has plenty of Rovers of this
same sort-men and women who lead fault.
less outward lives, who have no intention
to sin, who yield their judgment-if not
their conscience-to the motives of self
restraint, but who, in secret, resort to the
fields of temptation, and seek among its
eXctements for tie flavor at least, of the
sins which they have discarded. This realm
of temptation is to multitude of minds,
one of the most seductive in which their
feet ever wander. Thither they resort to
meet and commune with the images, beau
ful but impure, of the forbidden things that
lie beyond. In fact, | have sometimes
thought there were men and women who
were really more in love with temptation
than with sin,-who, by genuine experience,
had learned that feasts Of the imagination
were sweeter than feasts of sense. Wheth-
er this be the case, or not, have no doubt
that the love of temptation, for the excite
ment which it brings, is very general even
with those whom we esteem as patterns of
virtue. The surrender of the soul to these
eXcitements is the more dangerous from the
fact that, by some sort of sensual sophistry,
they are conceived to be harmless, & with
out the pale of actual sin. There is no in
tenton to sin in it, but only an attempt to
lilch from sin all the pleasure that can be
procured without its penalty.
Playing with the temptation to siu is
doubtless accompanied with less apparent
disaster than the actual commission of it,
and, so far is smaller eVil but it is an
evil, and, essentially, a SIM The man who
loves and seeks the excitement of tempta-
tion shows that he is restrained from sin by
fear-Nnd not by prnciple-that, while his
life is on the side of virtue, his affections
lean to vice. This is a sham life, and a
mean life. There are multitudes to whom
temptation comes from the forbidden world
OF sin, but it comes unbidden aud unwel-
come-on the lines of old appetites and old
passions not yet thoroughly under control
and it is fought against and driven out.
| is the voluntary going out of the soul af-
ter temptation, as kind of unforbidden
good, that l challenge and question. 1t is
the willing, secret sin of imagination that
| denounce, as not only a sin essentially, in
ITSELF but as the path over which every
Sonl naturally travels to the overtact of
transgresSion which lies beyond 1t is a
kind Of sin that Injuries none but the sinner,
directly; but fouler, more rotten-hearted
men have never met than the cowardly
bypocrites whose lives are spent in daily
ing with the thought of sins which they
dare not commit
We often wonder that certain men and
women are left by God to the commission
of sins which shock u.s. We wonder how,
under the temptation of single hour, they
fall from the very nights of virtue and hon
or into sin and shame. The fact is that
there are no such falls as these, or there
are next to pone. These men and women
are those who have dalied with temptation
have exposed themselves to the influence
of it, and have been weakened and corrupt
ed by it. If we could get at the secret
histories of those who stand suddenly dis
covered as vicious, we should find that they
had been through this most polluting pre-
paratOry process, s,-that they had been in
the habit of going out and meeting tempta-
tion in order that they might enjoy its ex-
citements, that underneath blameess
outward life they have welcomed and enter
tanned sin in their imaginations, until their
moral sense was blunted, and they were
ready for the deed of which they thought
they we're incapable.
very earnestly and gratefully believe in
the exercise Of diyinely restraining inhu-
ence upon the minds of those who are tempt
ed, but believe there is a point beyond
which it rarely goes / do not believe that
God will interpose to prevent man from
SHINING who either seeks, or willingly en-
counters, the temptation and the Oppor-
tunity to sim When a man finds charms in
opportunity, and delight in temptation he
has already committed in heart the sin
which he shrnks from embodying in action;
and God rarely stands between him aud
further guilt. We are to keep ourselves
c,ot n Il