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I Will Seek the Good, That I May Live, March 24
Guarding the Avenues to the Soul
Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God
of hosts, shall be with you.
Amos 5:14
Satan is using every means to make crime and debasing vice popular.
We cannot walk the streets of our cities without encountering flaring
notices of crime presented in some novel or to be acted at some theater.
The mind is educated to familiarity with sin. The course pursued by the
base and vile is kept before the people in the periodicals of the day, and
everything that can excite passion is brought before them in exciting
stories. They hear and read so much of debasing crime that the once
tender conscience, which would have recoiled with horror from such
scenes, becomes hardened, and they dwell upon these things with greedy
interest.
Many of the amusements popular in the world today, even with those
who claim to be Christians, tend to the same end as did those of the
heathen. There are indeed few among them that Satan does not turn
to account in destroying souls. Through the drama he has worked for
ages to excite passion and glorify vice. The opera, with its fascinating
display and bewildering music, the masquerade, the dance, the card table,
Satan employs to break down the barriers of principle and open the door
to sensual indulgence. In every gathering for pleasure where pride is
fostered or appetite indulged, where one is led to forget God and lose
sight of eternal interests, there Satan is binding his chains about the soul.
Our only safety is to be shielded by the grace of God every moment,
and not put out our own spiritual eyesight so that we will call evil, good,
and good, evil. Without hesitation or argument, we must close and guard
the avenues of the soul against evil.
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