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But natural men are said to be "dead in sin" and can the dead do aught which tends to their own resurrection? The renewed are said to be "dead to sin" Can they do nothing which tends to wickedness?+ Metaphors must be understood with latitude. We should involve ourselves in many absurdities, by always adhering to the literal sense of those used in scripture.
There are such men and such women; God forgive them for their wickedness! Do any of these scandal-mongers ever call to mind, I wonder, an ancient and, seemingly, a well-nigh forgotten injunction? "Thou shalt not bear false witness," said the same Voice who has also said, "Thou shalt do no murder." And which is the worst to kill a man's body, or to slay a man's honour, or a woman's reputation?
I do know, however, that she is perfectly innocent, and I am indeed thankful to think that at eighteen she knows nothing of the world and its wickedness, and is therefore eminently qualified to make somebody an excellent wife; and all I am afraid of is that the destined somebody will come for her all too soon, for I cannot bear to think of parting with her.
Into the inmost heart of maid, wife, mother, creeps the confessional, tainting, souring, defiling society in its springs, a leaven of malice and wickedness, a leaven at once of Pharisee and Sadducee, a superstition that believes everything in alliance with a scepticism that believes nothing, and all combined to conceal the salvation of God and enslave the spirits of men.
The orthodox view more clearly and unshrinkingly avows, that Jesus deliberately goaded the wicked rulers into the deeper wickedness of murdering him; but on my friend's view, that Jesus was no sacrifice, but only a Model man, his death is an unrelieved calamity. Nothing but a long and complete life could possibly test the fact of his perfection; and the longer he lived, the better for the world.
Bad men are often clever, but if their cleverness is of a superior order they rarely do anything bad. It is true that when they yield to the pressure of necessity their wickedness surpasses that of other men in the same degree as their intelligence.
All my past life rose up before me, and all my short-comings all, my mistakes, and all my wilful wickedness, seemed pleading trumpet-tongued against me. I saw her before me whose feet trod with mine the green holts and meadows, when the childish thought strayed not beyond the near or the possible.
They allow such a prince to be guilty indeed of much folly and wickedness, but for those he is to answer to God, as every private man must do that is guilty of mismanagement in his own concerns. Now the folly of this reasoning will best appear, by applying it in a parallel case.
The logic of this deduction, is beyond dispute; because they are direct attempts to thwart the progressive and evolutionary purpose of the planet; therefore, they must be considered as sins of the first magnitude. "Second in magnitude, and akin to these in wickedness, is the sin of society against women.
I could not help mentally adoring the works of the Creator, and my heart sunk within me at my own insignificance, folly, and wickedness. As we were now running along the shore, looking for our landing-place, and just going to take in the sail, the American captain, who sat close to the man at the helm, seemed attentively watching something on the larboard bow of the boat.