American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-02-10
Relisiouz department.
The Social Hazards of Sinful Life.


/ A gentleman in India once reared IT,
ger cub. His kindness seemed to eradi-
cate the ferocity of its nature, and it grew
up as docile as a pet pig. One day its
owner, being alone with it in his library,
caressed it and gave it his hand to lick.
The rough tongue of the animal grazed
his skin and gave its first taste of blood.
Then its ferocious nature awaked Fury
CLEANED from its eye, and couehing itself
it made ready to spring upon its master.
Fortunately the gentleman had loaded
pistol on his table and saved his life by
shooting his former pet.
Let this fact illustrate valuable truth.
Let the sleeping ferocity of the tiger,
walked by the taste of blood, stand for
figure of that slumbering passion in your
breast which needs but the taste of strong
temptation to rise into terrible life, and
to break over all the feeble defences which
a maltreated conscience, and pride of char
acter, may have built up in your soul to
protect its virtue. One moment of tri.
umphant passion may suffice to undo the
work of half lifetime. And yoo, have
you not this tiger in your breast?
! But you have established moral habits,
and you rely on their protection, perhaps,
Well, I congratulate you heartily. Good
moral habits are very desirable guardians,
and if they have been formed in obedi-
ence to the conscience and the religious
affections, they are as powerful to protect
as the angelic forces which guarded Eli
sha on the hill of Dothan.
Search, then, beloved reader for the eori-
gin of these boasted moral habits Seize
them therefore. Search them. Challenge
them as to whence they came and whith-
er they tend See if the best of them
are not merely negative virtues after all
that is, you habitually avoid certain forms
of sin because you have no natural incli-
nation for them. For example, you are
not a miser, because your nature is not
avarcious; you are not spendthrift, be-
cause your nature inclines you to save
rather to waste; you are not given tonoise
and qusTel, because your nature inclines
you to quiet and peace. These, with kim
dred habits, hardly merit the name of vir-
tues, because they require no effort-no
earnest willing, They are little else than
the passive sputgrowths of your mental
constitution, jnstas docility, fidelity peace
fulness are the results of organization in
some of the inferior animals.
Search, again, and see if Others of your
habits do not proceed from your educa-
ton, your life associations, your pride of
character, your self esteem, your love of
appreciation, your fear of obloquy or phys
ical suffering, or some other merely sell
fish motive? Look closely and think
you will discover SELF to be the sovereign
to whom these boasted moral habits do
homage. The bare fact that you choose
the world, instead of the Creator, to be
your supreme good and therefore lord over
your habits. You do not, because you can
not, serve both God and mammon. Con-
fessedly, God does not reign in you,
and therefore SelfsitaeSs must.
But are selfish habits reliable protectors
in these conflicts with the passions to
which you stand exposed? Remember,
that these passions make their appeal to
that very selfshness from WHICH your
present habits have sprung, self-will, self
interest, self f-pleasing-not respect for God
and duty-have made you what you are.
What may not happen, therefore, if in the
exigencies of your future life, the now
half awakened passion of acquisitiveness,
or ambition, or amativeness, should plead
with self-interest or self-leasing for dan
gerous and unlawful indulgencies. Would
your old habits be likely to resist the
pleadings of tlfeir own parents think you?
They might; and so might a fence of
rushes check the march of the awful ava
lanche; yet who would feel like building
his house beside such fence, with the
snow masses trembling above him, ready
to fall under the tread of passing cham
ois ?
1t cannot be; selfish habits cannot pro-
tect you from the assaults of temptations
which appeal to the very selfshness which
gave them birth. On the contrary, such
habits serve to betray your soul by pre-
pairing it for defeat in the hour of trial.
What are these habits but repeated acts
of fealty to. the dominant principle of self
ishness? What are they but the jailers
of your worldly mind, binding its will
with chains of steel to the throne of self
ishness, and keeping vigilant watch and
ward over it, lest 1t should flee its bond
I n 4 n