American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-01-27
9eliainiiE department.
The Social Hazards of Sinful Life.

III is lhlS ueceptlNepeSS, tniS conceal
ment of the skeleton beneath beautiful
mask which makes life of devotion to
sinful pleasure so perilous. If the word
poison was craven on its cup, if the draught
it offers was bitter to the taste, there
would be less of danger. But it is not
So The false goddess mixes a charmed
draught in chased cup. Her poison is
slow one too. 1t does its work so grad
ually, that he who drinks it finds it diff
cult to believe there is evil in the draught
at all. Did Dr. Dodd dream of this fate,
think you, when he first quaffed the wine
of fattery? He smacked his lips over it
with delight ;he was mutually intoxicated;
but he dreamed not that the folly which
led him to prefer the praise of men to
the praises of God, was the first step to-
wards total shame. Yet so it was, for
"Adulation is the death Of virtue:
Who hatters, is of all mankind the lowest
Save he who courts hattery."
Dr. Dodd, as we have seen, was foolish
enough first to love and then to court the
fiattery of the great. That folly led him
into habits of extravaganza. Those hab-
its plunged him into debt. His debts
goaded him until, becoming distrustful of
his friends and reckless of consequences,
he plunged into crime and perished on the
seaffold. Folly, then, was the first step
in his downward career. And is not fol-
ty the first step in the descent of all ~ho
sink into the pit of social shame? Is it
not the first link in the chain which binds
every demoralized and degraded man and
woman now groaning in the mire of infa-
my? Did eyera drunkard, gambler, deb
auchee, forger, political profigate, de-
faulter, plunge from the pure heights of
virtuous life into the slough of gross and
daring sin at Il Single leap? NEVER
NEVER Trace the fall of all such per-
sons back to its source and you will find
some folly-perhaps venial one only
at the beginning. Vanity, seeking graf
iication in the admiration of men, led
that poor poverty stricken mother into the
Jolly of the ill-advised marriage which
dragged her down to her present cherries
lot. The same weakness also led that pit
liable creature, whose presence now pol
lutes the street, into the folly of extrava-
giant dress Of seeking gay society, or of
listening to the voices of the flatterer, un-
til she was beguiled of woman's most pre-
cious jewel. The folly of aping his su-
periors in wealth led that forger into the
financial embarrassments which resulted
in crime. The Jolly of making haste to
be rich led that defaulter to appropriate
the property of others to his own use
The folly of yielding to the fascinations
Of a gay associate seduced that gambler
and that drunkard to frequent the ''hells"
in which their moral rusn was consumma-
ted. In short, study the life of any DE
graded man Or woman, either of the past
or present, and you will find the germ of
their corruption conceded in some sinful
or venial folly of their early lives Every
such life is but the fulfllment of the di-
vine prediction 4" Il, the greatness Of his
FOLLY he shall go astrGy."
Let. me strengthen my argument by
another fact. There is in the nature of
every human being some weak moral
point at which he is peculiarly accessible.
In other words, there is in all some mark
ed constitutional tendency which seeks
its development in some one or more of
those specific follies which have resulted
in the run-of all the socially fallen. One
for instance, is inclined to pride, another
to vanity, third is strongly predisposed
to covetounsess,a "a fourth to ambition "a fifth
to amatiyeness. and a sixth to violent out
bursts of anger. Others, again, have a
tendency to gluttony, insolence, obstinate
self-will, or to falsehood In every breast
the currents of nature set strongly in one
or more Of these evil directions. Even
st. Paul, in his regenerated state, was so
conscious of the presence of an easily
besetting" or constitutional sin, that he
required all the energy of his great will,
aided by the grace of God, to struggle
successfully with it. Hear his notable
confession /" keep under my body and
bring it into subsection, lest that by any
means, when / have preached to others,
| myself should be a cast away"
| assume, therefore, dear young reader,
that there are, in your nature, some strong
tendencies to particular forms of SIN.
know not what they are. You may be
proud, vain, covetous, lustful passionate,
or sclfwilled. But be your tendencies
what they may, they are active, and ever
prompting you to the perpetration of one
or more of these specific follies which have
led thousands, yea, tens of thousands, in
to shame and sorrow; for
As oagerIy the barr'd mn bird will beat