Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-11-11
AN HOURLY PERIL.
The Danger of Reasoning Where Right
and Wrong Are Concerned.

The Danger of Reasoning Where Right
and Wrong Are Concerned.
No wise man will ever feel safe in
this world; he will never retire from
daily and hourly efforts to sustain and
strengthen his character to live at ease
upon the accumulations of the past.
The force of right living is cumulative.
but there never comes a time when one
can afford to cease adding to that
capital of strength; to cease adding to
this capital is Immediately to lose it.
There is no such thing as doing the
work of life, and getting it out of the
way, so that we can give ourselves to
our personal schemes; the work of life
is never done until the hands of the
worker are folded in their last sheep.
There is no such thing as completed
character; character must be renewed
and confirmed day by day, or it is lost.
No man ever becomes strong enough to
take his ease in life, and to lay aside for
an hour the armor of purpose and
earnest endeavor. Many man has
wasted the achievement of a lifetime in
II moment of forgetfulness or of yield
| ing.
To the stron gest and truest, life is
never otherwise than great peril The
same atmosphere which nourishes and
sustains us while we stand in right re-
| lations with the forces and laws around
us, DESTROYS us when we get out of har-
mony with this spiritual and material
environment. The great batteries I'M
der the roof of the Western Union
| bu lding on lower Broadway serve the
| unspoken purpose of the operator so
long as he keeps his place among them;
| but, if, in moment of forgetfulness, he
| intercepts the current of electricity, he
pays for his folly with his life. So long
as the plant has its roots on the earth,
and spreads its leaves for the dew, the
sun will build it into strength and
beauty; but pull it up and lay it upon
the ground, and the same sun will de-
stroy it. So long as a man holds reso-
lutely to the doing of Righteousness the
universe works with and for him, but
the moment he transgresses the law the
whole movement of things is against
him, and, sooner or later, unless he re-
turns to his place again, VIII overwhelm
and destroy him. And no man, having
found his true place in the divine order
of things, can keep it otherwise than
by hourly watchfulness and struggle.
Solicitations to evil, temptations to
wrong-doing, come to the man who has
lived purely and honorably with quite
as much power as to the vicious man;
they come when he least expects them,
from quarters where he feels most Sc
cure, in gulses and forms which seem
most harmless to him. The bad man
knows that thing is evil, and makes
no attempt to deceive himself; the man
of naturally good impulses often con-
fuses his judgment by celebrating when
he ought to have acted, and rejecting
when he ought to have shut and barred
the doors of his soul against the very
quest on. 1t is never safe to reason
where right and wrong are concerned.
Follow your instinct implicitly. and re-
;ect the wrong, or it will beguile you
by the DEVILS sophistry into a sin which,
even when repented of, will consume
you with unavaillng regret No man
is ever safe. The defaulter whose breach
of trust is all the more terrible because
of the confidence reposed in him, and
the pure man who slept one little hour
at his post and was despoiled of that
which he can never buy back. confess
that life is always and for all men a
peril Christian Union.