Proverbs 2

Proverbs 2:10-11

THE SIN Proverbs 2:10-11; Proverbs 2:16-19FROM the first reading of our text, you will easily imagine the direction of this evening’s discourse. “The National Sin” is no sensational title, studied out by the preacher to excite questionings about “what it can be?” and attract Athenian auditors to hear the explanation of some new theory or thing. The title is fast becoming a technical term, and when authors or speakers employ it, there is need of no explanatory clause.American Society and Life sees itself eaten through and through today with that worm of uncleanness which worked its way to the heart of the Republics of Greece and Rome, and overthrew them; and, living on the vitals of intervening nations, came to feed and fatten itself most in the more modern Republics in whose worm-eaten houses, she has not only managed to survive, but to lay the eggs of impurity and hatch foul broods whose breath has poisoned the moral atmosphere of many nations, and whose blighting work becomes more and more evident in the social habits of American homes and streets.If the saloon had no peer as a civic scab, so the Bagnio knows no rival in the matter of generating social virus, and working wreck of soul.If there were need of apology for presenting such a subject, my only words of defense would lie along two lines.In the first place, commissioned as I am from God, to declare His whole counsel to men, I would seem to myself, to you, and to the holy angels, to be either a moral coward, or an indifferent hypocrite, if I was silent about one of the most prevalent and virulent iniquities of the hour in which we live.In the next place, I should seem to despise the only revelation that God has made to men, His holy Word, if I purposely passed by a multitude of texts which distribute themselves through the entire Book, from Genesis to Revelation; and point, with a hundred fingers, toward one sin, saying to the preacher, “Speak to that! Cry aloud! Spare not!” When I cease to preach a whole Bible, the time will be on when, I trust, my own integrity will drive me from the desk, sacredly set apart to that ministry which accepts and discourses the entire Word. Is it not written, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).We will follow the suggestions of the text, in the order of their natural occurrence.WOMAN’S SADDEST STEP The first few sentences in this Scripture portray woman’s saddest step.Our mothers, and sisters, and daughters, and female friends are capable of every crime possible to the sterner sex, and, under certain conditions, have committed the whole catalogue, from the petty lie or theft up to the most atrocious and shocking deed that ever stirred the hearts and stunned the senses of a civilized people. But among all her possible missteps, no one is so sad in its final consequence to character and destiny as that misstep of which Solomon, wrote when, of the strange woman, he said, “Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God”. What such a step means, in woman’s experience, only those know who have taken it, and suffered its dark, dismal, despairing results can understand.It is a long step for the average girl. The distance between the training of her youth, and the path she chooses after Satan has entered her heart, is a mighty distance. To stand at the beginning of it and look off toward its end, it seems almost like the distance between the bosom of Abraham on which Lazarus reclined, and the seething pit of Perdition from which Dives sent up his hopeless cries.That woman should cross it, in the growth of natural years, appears the least probable. Only think of it!

It is like this! Out on yonder street sixteen years ago, a young mother sat in her humble home, happy; yes, happier even than on her wedding day, because a little one—bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh—played about her feet. At even time, amid the silences of her own house, that bright, sweet face looked love and questioning into her eyes, while she talked to her of angels, and God, and Heaven, and read to her from the Holy Book and at last saw her in long white robes prepared to sleep Before she slept, she knelt at her mother’s knee, and clasping tightly the innocent hands, she raised the angel face to Heaven and prayed—prayed as children pray:“Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; And if 1 die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” But while she is kneeling in all her angelic sweetness and purity, exciting a mother’s love to finer flame, and starting love in angel’s bosoms, some dark fiend steals into that room; and though he be invisible, and no other hears him, the mother starts at his whisper, “Your child may yet be a prostitute”, but laughs him to scorn, and knows that her angel in human form will never take that fatal step.But the sixteen years have gone, and off in another city that child lives tonight, a fallen angel; and in her home the mother, made old by the weight of one awful load, sits in a solitude that none can break, or even enter—the solitude of a mother’s greatest sorrow—and prays by day, and pleads by night—sometimes audibly, more often in silence—“God, pity my sinning child and save her soul. God pity me, and help me to bear the insupportable sorrow.”You say that is a picture of fancy. I could show you such a mother inside a ten minute walk! Oh, it is a long step—the step from innocent, angelic girlhood—when youth is girded by a Christian mother and guarded by the sanctities of home— to an abandoned womanhood, when mother is forgotten, with all her holy precepts brought from the Holy Word! A long step!It is a step that has other dangerous steps back of it. A ruined girl said to me some years ago, as I talked with her about her sin, her shame, the opprobium she had brought on herself, and the wrong she had done her Church and Christ. “I know; it now!

But God knows, when I began to do questionable things, just for the pleasure of them, I never intended they should lead to this!”But every step has its direction, and leads either toward the good or the bad. Oh, fathers!

Watch the feet of your daughters, and see which way they turn. Their innocence seems to you their safeguard, and all your solicitude is about the son. But I was his pastor whose oldest daughter, after having been reared with tender hand, taught virtue by precept and example, trained in the Word, went wrong and today leads a life of shame. Back of the last fatal step were a hundred others, that ought to have excited fears, and stirred parents to some better efforts to save their own. But they thought danger only came to boys, and only saw their blunder when their solicitude was scorned and shame preferred.But again, no girl or woman takes that fatal step without the assistance, and often the lecherous betrayal, of man. It is not an uncommon thing for bad men to boast the number, the beauty, and the other attractions, of their victims; as if to ruin character, and blight life’s beauty, and blast hope for time and eternity, and break up the happiness of earth’s homes, and rob Heaven, were a thing of which to be proud.In Chicago one summer, four young silly creatures were led to the altar of Venus, and sacrificed to that filthy goddess in less than ten days, by travelling toughs, if the city press reported truly.

Doubtless they laughed at the wreck of virtue left in their lecherous trail. These were only the names of those whose ruin came to public notice, while the silent sufferers, who can know?Yonder in our Industrial home are many others who languish tonight in a prison built of the hard stones of masculine knavery, laid in the mortar mixed with their own girlish, yet bitter tears, destined never to be free from stain, and in the enjoyment of innocence, again.Some of the young men who robbed them of woman’s noblest charm, and sent them sobbing to their desolate, dreary life of shame, are walking our streets tonight in the pride of fiends, who glory in destructive work, shining in our social circles as if they had no hellish stains, or sitting solemnly in our sanctuaries, looking as pious as Faust, hiding beneath starched shirt-fronts a heart quite as black as that which beat in the bosom of Mephistopheles.

Proud of it! Then if there were no hell, God’s pity for the wronged, and His hatred of sin, would speedily build one, and reserve its lowest chambers of horror for those who take pleasure in such hideous deeds.It seems a pity that our secular press, the great educator of the masses, should be either such a moral coward, or else such a friend of fiends as to be silent at the sight of this sin, or ingenius and clever in palliating the guilt of the most damnable of men. It has only been a few months since the respectable patrons of a city press were treated to a sensational scrap of news that read after this manner, “There is a subscription paper going the rounds today that is of a decidedly novel and amusing character.” Mark the words, “novel and amusing character”. Oh, God, when we read what sentences follow, what language will describe his sense of right who could pen them? “A young girl has been keeping furnished rooms in this city, and with no visible means of support. Her health has been wrecked, and it is now sought to raise a fund to send her to an Arkansas resort. While it is a sad commentary on frail humanity, it reveals the fact that some of the young men are not without charity, and that is a virtue.”The paper showed donations from fifty cents up; some of the more sympathetic ones giving as high as ten dollars.

Then the article went on with a history of her fall from a Christian home, and a good name; and before it finished told how the father’s heart had broken at the discovery of his daughter’s ruin, and warned parents to guard their daughters against, the wiles “of evilly disposed wretches.”That was a strong (?) term for such a paper; but it only used it in a general way, and that after having made the incarnate fiends who worked her ruin to believe themselves angelic in their charity in that they gave to ship away her whose body was so racked with disease that it no longer tempted their lusts or sated them.It is difficult to know how much credence to put in popular rumors, but when, as a Pastor, the lot was mine to visit one led wrong, and hear what defence she had to offer in palliation of her conduct; and I found her face swollen with much crying, and saw the bitter, briny tears still scalding her cheek, I wished it were in my power to lead the men who had so cruelly wronged that child, into her presence, and let them look on the ruin their lust had wrought, until it proved a hell to their conscience, or showed them to be so heartless that hell would be voluntarily accepted as their just desert.I have heard one man, against whom society had made this charge, talk glibly of the ‘unutterable, unalterable, eternal love of God’, in language that had done credit to a preacher.But if his guilt were sure, Beecher’s prayer were none too strong. In his address on the subject of this hour’s talk, he said of such deeds and their need of judgment, “O Prince of torment; if thou hast transforming power, give some relief to this once innocent child whom another has corrupted!

Let thy deepest damnation seize him who brought her hither; let his coronation be upon the very mount of torment, and the rain of fiery hail be his salutation! He shall be crowned with thorns, poisoned and anguish-bearing, and let every woe beat upon him, and every wave of hell roll over the first risings of baffled hope. * * If Satan has one dart more poisoned than another, if there be one hideous spirit more unrelenting than others, they shall be thine, most execrable wretch, who led her to forsake the guide of her youth, and to abandon the covenant of her God.”Ah; and God will not let Satan finish the whole judgment upon his own. When the books are opened, and men assigned to heavenly heights or hellish depths, according to their deeds, the lowest pit will not be reserved for some Cain who, from envy, slew his brother; nor yet for any Absalom who, from unholy ambition, sought his father’s life; nor yet for that Herod who killed the innocents; nor even for Judas who betrayed his Lord for love of money; but rather, for that sleek gentleman—accomplished in the blackest of arts—who studiously arranged to gratify his lusts for ten minutes at the expense of woman’s honor, the happiness of time, and the hope of eternity.And who is so base as to cause such sacrifice to sate himself, deserves not only the lowest pit, but, that his torture be complete, should hear this requiem, sung through eternity in the sad wail of the wronged and ruined one :“Once I was pure as the snow, but fell, Fell like a snowflake from Heaven to hell; Fell, to be trampled like filth of the street, Fell to be scoffed at, be spit on, and beat, Pleading, cursing, begging to die, Selling my soul to whoever would buy; Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, Hating the living and fearing the dead.” “Oh, God, have I fallen so low, When once I was pure as the driven snow!” Of the strange woman, Solomon has also said, “Her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead; none that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life”.So Solomon warns men against bad women. The wrong is not all on one side. The men of America are not always and wholly to blame for the presence and desecrating power of our national sin. There are women who prefer to live by their shame; and who, with equal indifference to all human obligations or Divine precepts, plan the ensnaring of the opposite sex. Against the wiles of such, Solomon spoke none too strongly in affirming that “her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead”.Many a poor foolish boy thinks he is discovering the ways of life when he climbs the stairs that lead to her attractive den. The older wretch in infamy often says to some younger and cleaner man, “Come, let me take you around a little tonight, and show you something of life!”Alas for the prostitution of better terms!

How many are misled by it. The young and clean boy or man goes to see life, and returns having seen the beginnings of death.How artful Satan is!

How all the bones of the destroyed are carted out of sight; and all loathesome, suffering victims are removed from the wayside; and all reeking, rotting bodies are hid; and every stench smothered with sweet perfume, when a new victim is to pass along this highway of sin. It presents to him only show of good. Flowers seem to bloom at the edges of that road; the most bewitching voices call to him from couches where merriment reclines; the painted beauty beams on him as if he were a nobleman, and every whisper is a promise of sated love!Young men, let Solomon speak before you have passed further on! He knows about that road; he travelled it to the end! He saw its bewitching opening; he saw its ghastly termination. Let him speak, and listen! “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12).

That is the path to the strange woman’s house, “for her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead”.It means physical death to go there. When you enter the house of the prostitute, you are in the way to do violence to, and deteriorate, your physical self.

This fact is unknown to many, and forgotten by more. But it will make itself known to him who breaks the seventh commandment of God, and that in the universal language of men—the speech of suffering! You remember that Paul found it difficult to get the converted Gentiles to understand that to be Christians, they must be clean from such a sin. To the Corinthians he wrote, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).Oh, that men could understand that fact! Now fornication is lewdness, and may be committed either by self-abuse, the solitary habit, or by adultery.

In either case it means sowing the seed of physical disease or death, and many men find on their hands a bitter crop waiting to be reaped. I know there are some physicians who deny this, and teach with Gollman, but they are the quacks who give advice in the hope of gaining filthy lucre in return.

Such physicians deserve the contempt of their fraternity, the ostracism of society, and the frown of a holy God. Their falsehood is hourly exposed by indisputable proofs. Go into any audience and look at the faces of youth. You must be blind indeed not to see the wreck written in ashy complexions, the death in eye and hair, and the destruction apparent in every sluggish movement of some. Oh, it is a horrid disease, this of sex excesses. Its victims are slimy in their sickness, and multitudinous in number.An excellent Christian young man, a Y. M. C.

A. secretary, some years ago said that although his father took him aside at the age of eleven and explained and warned, his advice came too late to wholly save him from harm.In less than a year I have talked with a youth who is an awful wreck, and he said, “I knew no danger ‘till I was a victim at once of a relentless habit and a loathsome disease.”No wonder another young man, suffering the terrible sense of self-ruin, exclaimed, “Medical men who know about such things and refuse to speak out and warn the young against this vice, ought to be hanged, every one of them. Just a hint,” he said, “from my father or the family doctor, or a little book, would have saved me. * *. What, in Heaven’s name, are doctors and parents and preachers for, if they can’t give a single hint to the young about such things? If I had a million dollars,” he continued, “I would give it all to spread information about certain sex vices!”It would be an awful revelation, and yet doubtless a helpful one, if every young man in America had to undergo a medical examination upon reaching twenty-five years, and learn at the lips of skilled physicians his physical status. A great Chicago Daily said, “Out of thirty-two young men in New York City who were recently examined for West Point Cadetship, only nine were accepted as physically sound.” No wonder it concluded the note by adding, “The Hidden Vices are making havoc with the physical manhood of all our towns and cities.”But if the physical drain were all, it would not be so bad. When, however, we come to the disease and death this evil works for bodies, the strongest hearts grow sick.

Leading physicians declare that nature knows no other such a poison as that which the utterly abandoned woman communicates to her associates in, crime. My cousin, a well-instructed physician, a man of many years’ practice, said to me one day, while I was yet a boy, “Willie; I wish I might be privileged to take every youth of this county and show him a patient that I am treating now.

He is a victim of uncleanness, and every pore of his body drips putrefaction.”Young men, listen to Solomon, or rather to God, for in this text God speaks in warning against your visits to her, whose house inclineth unto death”, and whose paths lead unto the dead; “for she hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her”. (Proverbs 7:26).But the intellect of man is also destined to wreck in this house of the strange woman. Go into any one of our insane asylums, and pass through all the wards, and study the poor lunatics’ faces; and when you have finished, sit down with the doctor and ask what is the trouble with this man and that. While my brother held an appointment in the Anchorange Asylum, in Kentucky, I often went with him on his daily rounds. It is a sad sight at best to see the insane, but sadder still to learn that many were made maniacs by sin, their own or that of those who brought them into being. There are no sadder faces among the insane than those that lust has deprived of reason. Its most certain cruel work is accomplished through the good law of heredity, the first law of life. “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”, if not in himself, then surely in another, dearer to him than life.Among all the sad cases of insanity, the saddest that my eyes have beheld, was that of a beautiful and accomplished young girl.

Her fits of despondency, succeeded by those of laughing and saddest screaming, necessitated the Pastor’s presence in the house more than once. The mother was a beautiful Christian character; the father was dead, but he left his sin to flower and fruit in that eldest child.

The family physician told me how disease had passed from his dying body into the functional structure of her brain; and oh, it was a bitter harvest of mental decay and death that the wife and daughter gathered after he was in his grave.Men may seek to palliate the guilt of this crime as they will, but this is certain, that he who visits the house of the strange woman is indifferent to the highest interest or happiness of those whom God will put into his arms as his own. Let Dr.L answer once for all the hurtful lie that some have hatched to the effect that sexual intercourse is essential to health. That brilliant man affirmed, “If a healthy man refrain entirely from sexual pleasure, nature knows well what to do with those precious atoms. She finds use for them in building up a keener brain, and more vital and enduring nerves and muscles.”The climax of death is never reached until the soul is involved. If the disease and death resulting from the strange woman’s house were only physical, or even only physical and mental, men might go on to the end and yet have something left.But, if it also involves the death of the immortal soul, who will sate the flesh at such a cost? “None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life” (Proverbs 2:19); “for by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread; and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life” (Proverbs 6:26)It is difficult to reach the heart of a drunkard with the Gospel; more difficult to touch the conscience of a gambler; but most difficult to stir the soul of him who is given over to lust. There is no enemy to eternal life, holiness, happiness and Heaven, who is more artful in ensnaring and enchaining victims, than the strange woman.

The man who enters her enchanted place, but a few times, seems to sell his soul and feel that he can never again redeem it. She winds him about with that double corded web, spun from the strands of her wiles and his lust, and holds him fast for eternity.A young friend of mine who had been guilty of consorting with such, said to me, “All other habits were easily broken off, and other bad companions quickly shaken, when I gave my heart to the Lord; but the habit of lust and the strange woman tempted me for months, and but for the help of an all-merciful and powerful God, I should have returned and lost my soul.”If any man thinks he can break her spell, one earnest trial to leave her house forever will prove his impotence.

Beecher said of such futile struggles of men’s strength, “How often have I seen the spider watch, from his dark round hole, the struggling fly, until he began to break his web; and then dart out to cast his long, lithe arms about him and fasten new cords stronger than ever. So, God saith the strange woman shall secure her ensnared victims if they struggle.” “None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life”.It is the soul’s death to linger in the polluted, poisoned air. Quit it tonight, young men! You cannot in your own strength; but the God who kept Joseph, and restored David after he had fallen, can keep you in your native innocence, or even reclaim you from your fall, and blot the memory of your sin forever from Heaven’s record of human conduct. Will you let Him? The Saviour who looked on a poor fallen, yet penitent, woman, and with pity in His eye, and pardon in His tender speech, dismissed her to a better life, will pass no judgment against your soul if you will trust Him, repent and sin no more. If your body is wronged, that may never be righted in time; and if your mind is injured, that can scarcely be repaired; but the sin against your soul need not mean eternal death, unless you persist in your unlawful course, and refuse the help in God’s outstretched hand!