Los Angeles herald., 1906-07-09
JUDGE WILBUR
ADVISES MEN
DISCUSSES THE SPIRIT OF
SELF-ACoUITTAL
seif-Riehteousness and self-Iustlhea-
ton Are Breakers in the
Lives Of the
Ungodly

There is a way that seemeth right
to a man. but the end thereof is death,
was the topic of Judge Curtis d. Will
bur in his address before the Young
Mems Christian association Sunday
afternoon.
The speaker dwelt on self-righteous-
ness and self justification as dangerous
features in the lives of the ungodly.
He said in part:
"Self-righteousness and self-justif-
cation are the greatest dangers that
confront the sinner.
"It is true that the first step in the
Christian life is a conviction of sin. A
man must stand before the bar of his
own conscience adjudged to be a
guilty sinner before the process of for
giveness and of regeneration can be
brought into action.
1.-THE fact is that men without actu-
ally formulating it in words have de-
creed that in their own cases they are
mot guilty.
"Other men in plenty are guilty. The
church is full of hypocrites: politicians
are corrupt; business men are rotten
to the core; but charging all this he
claims that he himself is innocent Of
serious wrong.
ne may duHllI IOT Jne Sdhe VI dlBu-
ment that he has committed crimes of
gravity and yet in the same breath he
denies serious wrong doing.
The Wrong Spirit
"It is my purpose to speak today Of
this spirit of self-acGuittal.
Before taking up a modern instance,
let us remind ourselves that the
murder of Christ was justified by the
,r5o oxnadin1t that
man should perish (even though sim
less NAM. rather than thGt the nation
should perish.
"By this argument they justified the
violation of three at least of the ten
commandments: Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not bear false witness and
Thou shalt not covet'. So, binding
their own eyes to the fact that they
really sought to perpetuate their own
power in the existing order of things,
they wrought the greatest crime in his
tory.
"a certain man RECENTLY challenged
me to show by the Bible that drunken
ness would bring dire punishment. A
few references, quickly furnished.
startled him. for the most definite pre-
dictions of disaster in the Bible are
written concerning the drunkard.
Men justify all sorts of the most
CeDdSlIlS CRIMES, 10 lItlilStlNtS, ny lllt
spirit of self-righteousness
"a wicked man can face death
bravely because he justifies himself
and expects God to do likewise An
aroused conscience is always terror
stricken at the thought of facing the
Judgment seat of God unforgiven.
Every man has some scheme of God
and religion and of the future life that
will just let him into the gates of
heaven or some equally comfortable
berth.
His views may be such that he
counts himself liberal or 'inider
Bob Ingersoll, who had ridiculed
God all his life and denied future
life, betrayed this same feeling over
the casket of his deceased brother
Not Laughing Matter
"It has been laughingly said that
nine-tenths Of the men in our peniten-
tiaries are innocent This is not laugh
ing matter. but is typical of the condi-
ton OF heart of most sinners.
II have stood by the bedside of
dying man and heard him express salts
faction at the life he had lived, when I
knew that if half of his meanness
could have risen up before his aroused
conscience he would have needed no
other hell
BILE and are believed in, the end there
of is death
ga man can't eat poison and not be
harmed, or take fire into his bosom and
not be burned
"The rattlesnake bite does kill, no
matter how brave we may be about