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Patriarchs and Prophets
an influence to draw us away from God. While we pray, “Lead us not
into temptation,” we are to shun temptation, so far as possible.
It was when the Israelites were in a condition of outward ease and
security that they were led into sin. They failed to keep God ever before
them, they neglected prayer and cherished a spirit of self-confidence.
Ease and self-indulgence left the citadel of the soul unguarded, and
debasing thoughts found entrance. It was the traitors within the walls
that overthrew the strongholds of principle and betrayed Israel into the
power of Satan. It is thus that Satan still seeks to compass the ruin of
the soul. A long preparatory process, unknown to the world, goes on
in the heart before the Christian commits open sin. The mind does not
come down at once from purity and holiness to depravity, corruption,
and crime. It takes time to degrade those formed in the image of God
to the brutal or the satanic. By beholding we become changed. By the
indulgence of impure thoughts man can so educate his mind that sin
which he once loathed will become pleasant to him.
Satan is using every means to make crime and debasing vice pop-
ular. 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 pur-
sued 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
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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.