The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-07-10
Guard the Conscience.


Let it be your most earnest endeavor
to keep your moral instincts right and
true. Never let them be disguised by
sentiment; never let them be obit-
Grated bv self-indulgence: never let
them be sophisticated by lies. Do not
think that light words and careless
thought above them will be indiffer-
ent and will leave you unaffected by
them. Character" as is said by our
latest moralist, " is 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 season, 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 in eternity your happiness de-
ponds thereon. Onever 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
ruin and curse. O choose your side 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 punish
ment. That punishment is nothing less
than failure of all life: the waste, the
loss, the shipwreck of the human soul;
the sapping 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 60 up as dust; because they have
cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts,
and despised the word of the Holy One
of Israel" How powerful is the meta
phor. The rose is glorious flower,
yet how often have you seen rose-tree
shriveled, withered, 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 never seen it so?
Have you never seen careers that might
have been very happy, very innocent,
disgrace? And that is sad enough ;
but alas! there is something much
sadder; there is the paralysis of the
CONSTRUCTIVE, lne soaring, as Win not
iron, of the very faculty whereby we
discriminate between right and wrong.
AS the Israelites preferred the wretched
slavery and reeking flesh-pots of Egypt
to the mama, which was angels food {:
as the pure, delicious water is loath-
some TO the scorched palate of the
drunkard, 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 distinctions between right and
wrong. That is powerful and tragic
line of the Roman satirist, g Vir-
tutem cideont, intabescdntque relicta. y
Let them see virtue and pine for it,
not that it is beyond their reach. But
it 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 painlessness, 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:
How easy to keep free from sim
How hard that freedom to recall;
For dreadful truth it is that men
Forget the heavens from which they fall"
F. w. Fdrrdr, I'D.