Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1889-07-22
Reli9inns department.
Guard the Conscience.

Let it be your most earnest endea-
vor to keep your moral instincts right
and true. Never let.ssthem be dis
guised by sentiment; never let them
be obliterated by self-indulgence
never let them be sophisticated by
lies. Do not think that light words
and careless thought above them will
be Indifferent and will leave you
unaffected by them. Character"
as is said by our latest moralist, ssis
not cut marble it is not something
solid and unalterable it is something
living and changing, and may become
diseased, as our bodies do" You
learn here, in season and out of sea-
son, line upon line, precept upon
precept, here little, there little,
that obedience, diligence, honesty,
truth, kindness, purity are your duties
to God and man. You know that
this teaching is right and true, and
that in time and eternity your hap
piness depends thereon. o never
lose sight of it! Say to yourselves
constantly that this is good and that
evil this the noble course, that the
base; this right, that wrong; this
your duty and happiness, that your
n cir
in the battle of life, and be not found
on the wrong side. Abhor that which
is evil, cleave to that which is good
for as you have heard the sin and its
curse, so in very few words hear its
punishment. That punishment is
nothing less than failure of all life;
the waste, the loss, the shipwreck of
the human soul the sapphire of every
moral force and every vital instinct;
for ''as the fire devoureth the stubble,
and the flame consumeth the chatf, so
their root shall be as rottenness, and
their blossoms shall go up as dust;
because they have cast away the law
of the Lord of Hosts, and despised
the word of the Holy One of Israeli
How powerful is the mentaphor. The
rose is a glorious flower, yet how
often have you seen a rose-tree
shriveled and blasted producing
nothing but Wondering and loathly
buds. Why? Because there is some
poison in the sap or some canker at
the root. Have you ever seen it so?
Have you never seen careers that
might have been very happy, very in
nOcent, very prosperous, cut short,
blighted, in disgrace? And that is
sad enough; but alas there is some
thing much sadder there the paraly-
sis of the conscience, the soaring, as
with a hot iron, of the very faculty
whereby we discriminate between
right and wrong. AS the Israelites
preferred the wretched slavery and
reeking fiesh-pots of Egypt to the
mama, which was angels food; as
the pure, delicious water is loathsome
to the scourched palate of the drunk
ard, so do these, in their depraved
souls, learn at last not merely to call
evil good and good evil, but also to
put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter. "Like natural brute beasts
these have lost the distintions between
right and wrong. That is a power
full and tragic line of the Roman sati-
rist. g Vj7tutena Videant, intabescont,
que relictd.' Let them see virtue
and pine for it, not that it is beyond
their reach. But is worse stage
still not even to see, not even to pine
for it; as there is hope for the wound
that throbs with agony, but none for
that which has mortified to painless
ness, and this is death. This is
the worst woe that can befall finally
those who have learned to call things
by their wrong names, to call evil
good and good evil. "How easy"
says Christian poet:
GLOW easy to keep free from SIM
How hard that freedom to recall
For dreadful truth; is that men
Forget the heavens from which they fall