The consequences of sin in Christian preaching highlight the inevitable destruction and alienation that follow disobedience to God’s law. Sin leads to ruin not only spiritually but also in practical life, as selfishness, greed, and wrong choices bring harm and loss (Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 6:23). Illustrations often use images of ruin, reaping a whirlwind, and the collapse of prosperity to convey these truths.
Drunkenness defaces God's image and harms body, reason, conscience, and character.
There is no sin which doth more deface God's image than drunkenness: it disguiseth a person, and doth even unman him. Drunkenness makes him have the throat of a fish, the belly of a swine, and the head of an ass. Drunkenness is the shame of nature, the extinguisher of reason, the shipwreck of chastity, and the murder of conscience. Drunkenness is hurtful to the body. The cup kills more than the cannon: it causes dropsies, catarrhs, apoplexies; it fills the eye with fire, and the legs with water, and turns the body into a hospital.
— T. Watson
A drunk man froze to death after failing to cross a creek due to intoxication.
Joseph Ralston of Phillipsburg, Penn., met with a horrible death, by freezing, a few days ago. He had been drinking freely, and had, while drunk, endeavored to wade the Moshannoo Creek; but, ere he had proceeded two-thirds of the way, his limbs refused to perform their office. He grasped a bough of an overhanging tree, unable to advance farther; and soon the fast congealing water cemented close about him, — a tomb of ice which stretched from shore to shore. Two days after, he was found there rigid as an icicle, his knees imbedded in a sheet of the frozen element seven inches thick, his body inclined a little forward, his hands clutching the boughs, eyes astare, and despair pictured on his features.
— Pittsburgh Dispatch
A man was knocked down by smelling strong liquor, illustrating alcohol's overpowering effect.
A druggist who keeps a store in the western part of the State, and is more fond of taking jokes than medicine, was recently surprised by the appearance of a thorough Yankee, who asked, "Be yeou the drugger?" — "Well, I suppose so: I sell drugs."—"Well, have yeou got eny uv this ere sentin' stuff as the gals put on their bankerbers?"—"Oh, yes!"—"Wall, our Sal is gwine to be married; and she's gin mo a ninepence, and told me to invest the whole 'mount in sentin' stuff, so to make her sweet, ef I could find somethin' to suit: so, it yeou're a mind, I'll just smell around." The
Yankee smelled around without being suited, until the "drugger" got tired of him, and, taking down a bottle of hartshorn, said, "I've got a scenting stuff that will suit you. A single drop on a handkerchief will stay for weeks, and you can't wash it out; but, to get the strength of it, you must take a good big smell."
—"Is that so, mister? Well, jist hold on a minute till I git breath; and, when I say, 'Now!'
yeou put it under my smeller." The hartshorn of course knocked the Yankee down, as liquor has many a man. Do you suppose he got up and smelt again? Rolling his sleeves, and doubling his fists, he said, "Yeou made me smell that tarnal everlasting stuff, mister; and now I'll make yeou smell brimstone." And he gave the druggist a beating which he will remember for years. This is the kind of treatment Mr. Gough would have the drunkard give the drink that knocks him down.
Drunkenness led a group to madness and suicidal thoughts, showing its destructive power.
Molière, the father of French comedy, being in a delicate state of health, left Paris, and retired to his villa at Auteuil, to pass a short time. One day, Boileau, accompanied by Chapelle, Lulli,
De Junsac, Nantouillet, came to visit him.
Molière could not join them on account of his illness; but he gave the keys of his house to
Chapelle, and begged him to do the honors for him. Chapelle acquitted himself of this task in such a manner, that, at supper, not one of them was sober. They began to discuss the most serious matters; and at last, having impously decided that the greatest good was never to have been born, and the next to die as soon afterwards as possible, they resolved, shooking as the proposition may sound, to go in a body, and drown themselves in the Seine.
In the mean while, Molière, who had retired to his chamber, was informed of this state of affairs; and, invalid, as he was, he hastened to join the mad party. Seeing how far gone they were, he did not attempt to reason them out of their determination, but demanded to know what he had done that they should think of destroying themselves without him. "He is right," cried Chapelle; "we have been unjust towards him: he shall be drowned with us." — "One moment, if you please, though," observed the dramatist. "This is the last act of our lives, and not to be undertaken rashly: if we drown ourselves at this hour of the night, people will say that we are drunk, and we shall lose all merit. Let us wait until morning; and then, in broad daylight, and upon empty stomachs, we will throw ourselves into the river in the face of our fellow-creatures." This was, after some demurrer, approved of; and the next morning, bad as the world was allowed to be, no one thought it bad enough to quit it.
Monkeys imitating a drunkard's behavior rebuked him, leading to his sobriety.
A rich drunkard kept two monkeys for his sport. Once he looked into his dining-room, where he and his guests had left some wine, and the two had mounted the table, and were helping themselves to the wine, jabbering and gesturing just as they had seen their master and his guests. Soon they were merry, and jumped about; but at last they got to fighting on the floor, and tearing out one another's hair. The drunkard stood in amazement. "What!" said he, "is this a picture of myself? Do the brutes rebuke me?" Ever after he was a sober man.
A man's worldly success cost him his soul, showing the ruin of neglecting spiritual life.
"What is the value of this estate?" said a gentleman to another with whom he was riding, as they passed a fine mansion surrounded by fair and fertile fields. "I don't know what it is valued at: I know what it cost its late possessor."—"How much?"—"His soul. Early in life, he professed faith in Christ, and obtained a subordinate position in a mercantile establishment. He continued to maintain a reputable religious profession till he became a partner in the firm. Then he gave less attention to religion, and more and more to business; and the cares of the world choked the word. He became exceedingly rich in money, but so poor and miserly in soul, that none would have suspected that he had ever been religious. At length, he purchased the large estate referred to, built a costly mansion, sickened, and died. Just before he died, he remarked, 'My prosperity has been my ruin.'"
Prideful cruelty leads to harsh punishment mirroring one's own intended evil.
Tamerlane the Great, having made war on Bajazet, Emperor of the Turks, overthrew him in battle, and took him prisoner. The victor gave the captive monarch at first a very civil reception; and, entering into familiar conversation with him, said, "Now, king, tell me freely and truly what thou wouldst have done with me had I fallen into thy power." Bajazet, who was of a fierce and haughty spirit, is said to have thus replied, "Had the gods given unto me the victory, I would have enclosed thee in an iron cage, and carried thee about with me as a spectacle of derision to the world." Tamerlane wrathfully replied, "Then, proud man, as thou wouldst have done to me, even so shall I do unto thee." A strong iron cage was made, into which the fallen emperor was thrust; and thus, exposed like a wild beast, he was carried along in the train of his conqueror. Nearly three years were passed by the once mighty Bajazet in this cruel state of durance; and at last, being told that he must be carried into Tartary, despairing of then obtaining his freedom, he struck his head with such violence against the bars of his cage as to put an end to his wretched life. Percy.
Sin has ruined humanity’s original glory though nature still reflects God’s design.
The harp of Eden, alas! is broken. Unstrung and mute, an exiled race have hung it on the willows; and "Ichabod" stands written now in the furrows of man's guilty forehead, and on the wreck of his ruined estate. Some things remain unaffected by the blight of sin, as God made them for himself; the flowers have lost neither their bloom nor fragrance; the rose smells as sweet as it did when bathed in the dews of paradise; and seas and seasons, obedient to their original impulse, roll on as of old to their Maker's glory. But from man, alas! how is the glory departed! Look at his body when the light of the eye is quenched, and the countenance is changed, and the noble form is festering in corruption, mouldering into the dust of death; or (change still more hideous) look at the soul! The spirit of piety dead, the mind under a dark eclipse, hatred to God rankling in that once loving heart, it retains but some vestiges of its original grandeur, — just enough, like the beautiful tracery and noble arches of a ruined pile, to make us feel what glory once was there, and now is gone. Dr. Guthrie.
Man’s sin caused all creation to be subjected to futility and decay.
When man sinned, then, in the language of our great poet, "All Nature felt the wound." Man was as the highest note in the scale of creation; and, when he descended, through all Nature there followed a corresponding reduction. It became subject to vanity, not willingly, not by an act of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected the same; by reason, that is, of man (Rom. viii. 20). Trench.
Small sins become chains that bind a person permanently if indulged in repeatedly.
The wolf Fenri of Northern mythology, occasioned the god much trouble. He possessed remarkable strength, breaking the strongest fetters as if they had been spiders' threads. At the request of the gods, the mountain-spirits made the wonderful chain called Gleipnir, with which to bind him. It was composed of six articles.
—the noise made by the footfall of a cat, the beards of women, the roots of stones, the breath of fishes, the nerves of bears, and the spittle of birds,—things so absurd as to awaken no suspicion. It was made smooth and soft, and appeared as slight as a ribbon. With the promise of the gods to unbind him if he found it too strong to break, the wolf suffered himself to be bound. Then he found, to his dismay, that he could not break the chain; neither would the gods release him. Such is the fate of most who indulge in little sins till they are bound fast forever.
Bad habits, once formed, are as hard to change as a river's established course.
Bad habits are very easily formed; and, when they are once formed, they are just like the course of a mighty river. You know, that when the river has worn out a course for itself, whether through the soft soil, or the hard rock, or the pleasant meadow, it is very difficult to divert it out of its accustomed channel. Some of the oldest rivers in the world have the same place in the map, and the same windings on the face of the earth, which they first cut for themselves; and that way they have continued to follow through the succession of all coming generations.
— J. A. Wallace
Idlers see others enjoy blessings but cannot partake due to their own laziness.
In a workhouse at Hamburg, idlers are punished by being suspended in a basket above the tables, so that they can see and smell the things provided for the industrious, but are not allowed to taste them.
Inebriety visibly degrades a person’s body and spirit, marking them with shame.
Rogues have had the initial letter of their title burnt into the palms of their hands; even for murder, Cain was only branded on the forehead: but, over the whole person of the debauchee or the inebriate, the signatures of infamy are written. How Nature brands him with stigma and opprobrium! How she hangs labels all over him to testify her disgust at his existence and to admonish others to beware of his example! How she loosens all his joints, and sends tremors along his muscles, and bends forward his frame, as if to bring him upon all-fours, with kindred brutes, or to degrade him to the reptiles crawling! How she disfigures his countenance, as if intent upon obliterating all traces of her own image, so that she may swear she never made him! How she pours rheum over his eyes, sends foul spirits to inhabit his breath, and shrieks, as with a trumpet, from every pore of his body, "Behold a beast!" H. Mann.
An infidel blames the one who led him to sin as he dies in torment and isolation.
On the bed, in his last illness, lay an infidel. The door opened; and a companion who had first led him into the path of vice entered. The dying infidel, recovering himself for a moment, recognized him with a bitter smile, saying, "Behold thy work: thou hast done this!" The wretch approached, and began to pour into his ear his sophistical arguments. Turning a face, pale with rage, he cried, "Leave me, begone! you have poisoned my existence; you have directed my soul to hell: and dare you, in this hour, torture your victim?" The man slunk away rebuked, and left the room, perhaps, in his turn, to die the same miserable death. The poor infidel raved, swore, and blasphemed, till the nurse, unable to bear the horrible scene, fled, and left him to die alone. Caughey.
Ungratefulness leads to betrayal and divine punishment, as shown by the ungrateful soldier.
A petted soldier of the Macedonian army was shipwrecked, and cast upon the shore, apparently lifeless. A hospitable Macedonian discovered him, revived him, took him to his home, and treated him in a princely manner, and, when he departed, gave him money for his journey. The rescued soldier expressed warm thanks, and promised royal bounty to his benefactor. Instead, when he came before Philip, he related his own misfortunes, and asked to be rewarded by the gift of the house and lands of his rescuer. His request was granted; and he returned and drove out his former host. The latter hastened to lay the true state of the case before the king; when he restored the lands, and caused the soldier to be branded in the forehead, "The Ungrateful Guest," as the reward of his baseness.
Intemperance causes enormous social and economic costs, destroying body and soul.
It is estimated that four hundred and ninety million gallons of spirituous liquors were drank in this country in 1868, which, if loaded upon thirty-foot teams, holding ten barrels each, would reach nearly seven thousand miles. The annual cost of the five hundred thousand paupers made by intemperance amounts to thirty-five million dollars; of the insanity resulting from it, twelve million dollars: the expense to the country of the crimes committed by it is forty million dollars. Add to these amounts the cost of the liquor (about a billion dollars), the value of the grain, sugar, and property destroyed, the labor lost, and the sickness in hospitals; and we have the estimated enormous amount of one billion, six hundred and fifty million dollars annually expended in this country for this body-and-soul destroying curse.
A drunkard chooses his addiction over healing, showing the power of intemperance.
An old toper of sixty called on a doctor to get a remedy for inflamed eyes. The doctor told him he thought he could cure him; but it would be necessary for him to leave off drinking entirely. "Then farewell, eyes!" said the infatuated drunkard.
Intemperance devastates families, leaving no household untouched by its victims.
A lady, who opposed the strict temperance-principles of Gov. Briggs of Massachusetts while at a party, at his suggestion undertook to think over the families of her acquaintance, and note the effects of intemperance among them. After half an hour she returned, her eyes filled with tears, exclaiming, "O Gov. Briggs! how could you ask me to do such a thing at a party! I am appalled: it is so dreadful to find that I do not know a family that does not number one victim; and some have had all their brightest and best fall by it,—fathers, husbands, children. It is too dreadful to think of! I would not have believed it. You are quite right; and I will never ask you to drink wine, nor ever call you fanatical for not taking it."
Knowing God's will but not doing it fuels the eternal fire of hell.
Hell-fire burns with rage, and meets with fuel fully prepared for it, when God dooms unto it a head full of light and a heart full of lusts. Those who know God's will, but do it not, do but carry a torch with them to hell, to pile that fire which must forever burn them. Bp. Hopkins.
God's law restrains evil and protects us like a fence, not a prison.
No doubt the law restrains us; but all chains are not fetters, nor are all walls the gloomy precincts of a jail. It is a blessed chain by which the ship, now buried in the trough, and now rising on the top of the sea, rides at anchor, and outlives the storm. The condemned would give worlds to break his chain: but the sailor trembles lest his should snap; and when the gray morning breaks on the wild lee-shore, all strewn with wrecks and corpses, he blesses God for the good iron that stood the strain. The pale captive eyes his high prison-walls to curse the man that built it, and envy the little bird, that, perched upon its summit, sings merrily, and flies away on wings of freedom; but were you travelling some Alpine pass, where the narrow road, cut out of the face of the rock, hung over a frightful gorge, it is with other eyes you would look on the wall that restrains your restive steed from backing into the gulf below. Such are the restraints God's law imposes, — no other. It is a fence from evil, — nothing else. I challenge the world to put its finger on any one of these Ten Commandments, which is not meant and calculated to keep us from harming ourselves or hurting others. Dr. Guthrie.
Licentious living brings hidden misery despite outward appearances of happiness.
The life, opportunities, and seeming enjoyments of Col. Gardner were such as to secure him the name of "The Happy Rake." While being congratulated by his companions, one day, he could not forbear groaning, and saying, as a dog entered the room, "Oh that I were that dog!"
Sin and worldly distractions gradually crush and destroy a person's spiritual life.
One of the tortures of the Hohenslaufen family was that of a cell, which, at the prisoner's first entrance, presented an air of comfort and ease; so that it was not till he had been a few days confined, that he observed the dimensions of his chamber beginning to contract. The fact became more appalling every day. Slowly the sides drew closer; and the unhappy victim at last was crushed to death.
3570-3572. LIFE, Crises in. A young man was once under a state of deep inquiry about his eternal interests. Two or three of his companions learned that he was going to prayer-meeting; and they determined to change his purpose. They persuaded him, only this once, to go to the accustomed place of resort. He finally yielded. They plied their arts of amusements, gayety, and pleasure, and bound him at last in the snares of a female companion. It was his fatal moment. In a few weeks from that time, he had committed murder, and followed the deed with instantaneous self-destruction. Hoven.
Small flaws or sins can greatly diminish value and damage character over time.
Once a famous ruby was offered to England. The report of the crown-jeweller was, that it was the finest that he had ever seen or heard of; but that one of its facets—one of the "little" cuttings of the face—was slightly fractured. The result was, that almost invisible flaw reduced its value by thousands of pounds; and it was rejected from the regalia of England. Again: when Canova was about to commence his great statue of the great Napoleon, his keenly observant eye detected a tiny red line running through the upper portion of the splendid block, that, at infinite cost, had been fetched from Paros; and he refused to lay a chisel on it. Once more: in the story of the early struggles of the elder Herschel while he was working out the problem of gigantic specula, or telescope lenses, you will find that he made scores upon scores, ere he got one to satisfy him. A scratch like the slenderest spider-line sufficed to vitiate what had cost him long weeks of toil and anxiety. Grosart.
Tiny sins can secretly destroy a person’s character like insects ruining timber.
In certain harbors, if you plant the largest timbers as foundations for your wharves, you will find, after a time, that a little insect has been at work, piercing, like a tiny thread of fire, the taken pile; so that, if a hand touch it, it will crumble like wood burned in the flame. Perhaps you have seen sections of piles, or ship's timbers, which were thus riddled through and through by these madrepores. Did the sight not awaken a thought in your mind with regard to your own danger in cherishing those little sins which eat away and destroy the fibre and strength of a good character? Beware of little sins! As an old writer expresses it, "A ship may be sunk by a cargo of sand, as well as by a cargo of mill-stones." Beecher.
A single small sin can cause gradual decay and ruin a promising life.
A company was walking in Sudbrook Park, when Dr. Ellis drew attention to a large sycamore-tree, decayed to the core. "That fine tree," said he, "was killed by a single worm." Two years previously, the tree was as healthy as any in the park, when a woodworm, about three inches long, was observed to be forcing its way under the bark of the trunk. It then caught the eye of a naturalist who was staying there; and he remarked, "Let that worm alone, and it will kill the tree." This seemed very improbable; but it was agreed, that the black-headed worm should not be disturbed. After a time, it was discovered that the worm had tunnelled its way a considerable distance under the bark. The next summer, the leaves of the tree dropped off very early; and, in the succeeding year, it was a dead, rotten thing, and the hole made by the worm might be seen in the very heart of the once noble trunk. "Ah!" said one who was present, "let us learn a lesson from that single tree. How many who once promised fair for usefulness in the world and the church have been ruined by a single sin!"
Neglecting a small wound led to fatal consequences, illustrating sin’s danger.
Gen. Norris, having, as he thought, received a slight wound in the wars of Ireland, neglected the same, presuming that the balsam of his own body, without calling in those other auxiliaries of art, would work a cure; but his arm gangrened, and both arm and life were lost together.
Neglecting small sins can lead to total ruin and loss without confession and forgiveness.
In the late civil war, one of the Federal war-ships had what seemed a merely superficial "leakage;" and, though noticed, it was not thought necessary to countermand the order that she should take part in an approaching conflict. At the crisis of the encounter, it was found that the sea-water had got oozing into the gunpowder-magazine, and rendered nearly the whole useless. On that powder hung victory or defeat. The "little leak" went uneared for; and an inferior force won. Nothing in or about sin can be—except in the relation of words—"little:" that sin is and ever must be sin, and sin only, and sin absolutely, and sin eternally. The smallest neglected spark of fire has flashed out into a conflagration; the smallest neglected leak has sunk the proudest ship; the smallest neglected sickness has "brought down" to the grave; and the smallest consciously neglected, unconfessed, and therefore unpardoned sin will lose you, O man! O woman! thy soul. Only when our sin has been carried to the Lord, in penitent confession been placed beneath the "sprinkling blood," is there deliverance.
— Grosart
Allowing small sins leads gradually to greater sin and spiritual downfall.
There are two ways of coming down from the top of a church-sterple: one is to jump down, and the other is to come down by the steps; but both will lead you to the bottom. So, also, there are two ways of going to hell: one is to walk into it with your eyes open (few people do that), the other is to go down by the steps of little sins; and that way, I fear, is only too common. Put up with a few little sins, and you will soon want a few more, (even a heathen could say, "Who ever was content with only one sin?") and then your course will be regularly worse and worse every year. Reader, the Devil only wants to get the wedge of a little allowed sin into your hearts, and you will soon be all his own. Never play with fire; never trifle with little sins!
Lustful pleasure is outwardly sweet but inwardly bitter and leads to repentance.
As pills that are outwardly fair, gilt, and rolled in sugar, but within are full of bitterness; even so lustful pleasure is no sooner hatched but repentance is at hand, ready to supplant her; for pleasure and sorrow are twins. Cawdray.
Despite warnings, people persist in lust, ignoring conscience and risking ruin.
I have some here who have had warnings so terrible, that they might have known better: they have gone into lusts which have brought their bodies into sickness; and perhaps this day they have crept up to this house, and they dare not tell to their neighbor who stands by their side what is the loath-someness that even now doth breed upon their frame. And yet they will go back to the same lusts: the fool will go again to the stocks, the sheep will lick the knife that is to slay him.
You will go on in your lust and in your sins, despite warnings, despite advice, until you perish in your guilt. How worse than children are grown-up men! The child who goes for a merry slide upon a pond, if he be told that the ice will not bear him, starteth back affrighted;
or, if he daringly creepeth upon it, how soon he leaves it if he hears but a crack upon the slender covering of the water! But you men have conscience, which tells you that your sins are vile, and that they will be your ruin: you hear the crack of sin as its thin sheet of pleasure gives way beneath your feet; ay, and some of you have seen your comrades sink in the flood, and lost; and yet ye go sliding on. Worse than childish, worse than mad, are you, thus presumptuously to play with your own everlasting state. Spurgeon.
Lying can lead to fatal consequences, as shown by a man feigning death struck by lightning.
Two scoundrels sought to obtain money from Archbishop Leighton; one feigning death, and the other soliciting charity on this account. When the solicitor returned to his accomplice, he found him dead indeed, killed by lightning, as he feigned to be.
Lying destroys credibility and is punished severely, illustrating the value of truthfulness.
When Aristotle, who was a Grecian philosopher, and the tutor of Alexander the Great, was once asked what a man could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, "Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth." On the contrary, it is related that when Petrarch, an Italian poet, a man of strict integrity, was summoned as a witness, and offered in the usual manner to take an oath before a court of justice, the judge closed the book, saying, "As to you, Petrarch, your worth is sufficient." From the story of Petrarch we may learn how great respect is paid to those whose character for truth is established; and from the reply of Aristotle, the folly as well as wickedness of lying. In the country of Siam, a kingdom of Asia, he who tells a lie is punished, according to law, by having his mouth sewed up.
Sin inevitably grows and cannot be held in by moderation or partial restraint.
You cannot, though you may think you can, preserve a moderation in sin. If you commit one sin, it is like the melting of the lower glacier upon the Alps: the others must follow in time. As certainly as you heap one stone upon the cairn to-day, the next day you will cast another; until the heap, reared stone by stone, shall become a very pyramid. Set the coral insect at work: you cannot decree where it shall stay its work. It will not build its rock just as high as you please: it will not stay, until it shall be covered with weeds, until the weeds shall decay, and there shall be soil upon it, and an island shall be created by tiny creatures. Sin cannot be held in with bit and bridle.
— Spurgeon
A wise man's saying highlights the peril and divine judgment awaiting tyrants and murderers.
Thales Milesius, one of the wise men of Greece, being asked what was the most difficult thing in life, answered, "For a tyrant to live to old age." The application may be extended to the cruel, bloodthirsty, and murderers.
Murmuring against God harms ourselves, not Him, like arrows that fall back on the shooter.
I have read of Caesar, that, having prepared a great feast for his nobles and friends, it so fell out, that the day appointed was so extremely foul, that nothing could be done to the honor of the meeting: whereupon he was so displeased and enraged, that he commanded all them that had bows to shoot up their arrows at Jupiter, their chief god, as in defiance of him for that rainy weather; which when they did, their arrows fell short of heaven, and fell upon their own heads, so that many of them were very sorely wounded. So all our murmurings, which are as so many arrows shot at God himself,—they will return upon our own pates' hearts: they reach not him; but they will hit us: they hurt not him; but they will wound us. Therefore it is better to be mute than to murmur: it is dangerous to provoke a "consuming fire." T. Brooks.
Murmuring is a root sin that breeds many other sins and blasphemy against God.
As the River Nile bringeth forth many crocodiles, and the seorpion many serpents, at one birth, so murmuring is a sin that breeds and brings forth many sins at once. It is like the monster hydra,—cut off one head, and many will rise up in its room. It is the mother of harlots, the mother of all abominations, a sin that breeds many other sins; viz., disobedience, contempt, ingratitude, impatience, distrust, rebellion, cursing, carnality: yea, it charges God with folly; yea, with blasphemy. The language of a murmuring soul is this: "Surely God might have done this sooner, and that wiser, and the other thing better." T. Brooks.
Murmuring sours all God's mercies, making sweet blessings taste bitter to the soul.
Consider that murmuring is a mercy-imbittering sin, a mercy-souring sin. As the sweetest things put into a sour vessel become sour, or put into a bitter vessel bitter; so murmuring puts gall and wormwood into every cup of mercy that God gives into our hands. The murmurer writes "Marah," that is, bitterness, upon all his mercies; and he reads and tastes bitterness in them all. As "to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet," so to the murmuring soul every sweet thing is bitter.
A nation's sins determine its downfall and punishment compared to others' sins.
It was a sound reply of an English captain at the loss of Calais, when a proud Frenchman scornfully demanded, "When will you fetch Calais again?"—"When your sins shall weigh down ours."
— Brooks
Good intentions can lead to harmful outcomes when sin distorts them, like the guillotine's invention.
M. Guillotin, the inventor of the instrument of death which bears his name, was a physician of Paris well known for his mildness of disposition and his philanthropy. He devised the guillotine with the sole intention of mitigating the severity of capital punishment; but it turned out a voracious monster, always clamoring for blood.
Sinful behaviors often cause poverty by wasting resources and causing conflict.
Poverty is very frequently the direct effect and consequent of sin and vice. The drunkard drinks off his estate, like his cups, to the very bottom, and leaves nothing behind. The vain-glorious man wears his fortunes upon his back, till at length he has worn them out. The contentious man follows the law against his neighbor, for the gratification of his revengeful humor, so long, that, in the end, the very obtaining of the cause does not defray the charges, or remove the poverty contracted by its prosecution.
— Dr. South
Prodigals fall from indulgence to ruin, ending in degradation and loss.
We never find the Scripture commending any prodigal but one, and him, too, only for his ceasing to be so; whose courses, if we reflect upon, we shall see his prodigality bringing him from his reveling companions and his riotous meats to the swine and to the trough, and from imitating their sensuality, by a natural consequence, to take up with their diet too. Dr. South.
Envying the wicked's prosperity ignores the costly consequences they face.
When a sollier was to die for taking a bunch of grapes against the general's command, he went to execution eating his grapes. One of his fellows rebuked him, saying, "What! are you eating your grapes now?" The poor man answers, "I prithee, friend! do not envy me these grapes! for they do cost me dear." So they did indeed; for they cost him his life.
I thus let no man envy the prosperity of the wicked.
— Spencer
Every action inevitably produces corresponding consequences, both now and eternally.
The pea contains the vine and the flower and the pod in embryo; and I am sure, when I plant it, that it will produce them, and nothing else. Now, every action of our lives is embryonic, and, according as it is right or wrong, it will surely bring forth the sweet flowers of joy, or the poison fruits of sorrow. Such is the constitution of this world; and the Bible assures us that the next world only carries it forward. Here and hereafter, "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Beecher.
Delayed punishment emboldens sinners to greater sin, falsely thinking they'll escape.
As an old thief who has a long time escaped detection and punishment is emboldened to proceed to greater crime, thinking that he shall always escape; so many impenitent go on in sin, thinking, that, because God does not at once punish them, therefore they shall escape altogether. Cawdray.
Remorse for murdering his father haunted a man until his early death.
The cruel Al Montaser, having assassinated his father, was afterwards haunted by remorse. As he was one day admiring a beautiful painting of a man on horseback, with a diadem encircling his head, and a Persian inscription, of which he inquired the meaning, he was told that it signified, "I am Shinnych, the son of Kosru, who murdered my father, and possessed the crown only six months." He turned pale, as if struck by a sentence of death. Frightful dreams interrupted his slumbers; and he died at the early age of twenty-five.
— Whitecross
A landlord's harshness caused a child's death and his own torment and death.
Chryses, a rich landlord, ordered his steward to turn out a poor widow with four children, one of them too sick to be moved, because she could not pay her rent. They were driven out amid many tears and much crying. Chryses lay down to rest in his summer-house; but a brook which flowed near seemed to imitate the crying of the poor children. Then he heard distant thunder, which seemed to him as the voice of justice. He arose, and sent his servant to bring back the poor widow; but she could not be found. He heard that the sick child had starved in the wood, and was filled with remorse. His gardens and luxuries became hateful to him. He became delirious. Every sound was an accusing voice. So he died.
Society returns to us what we give, urging truth and love in our words and actions.
Society is like the echoing hills. It gives back to the speaker his words, groan for groan, song for song. Wouldest thou have thy social scenes to re-sound with music? then speak ever in the melodious strains of truth and love. "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." Dr. Thomas.
Defying God's Sabbath law can bring sudden loss and destruction despite human effort.
An infidel defied the law of the sabbath, and boasted that he would do all the work on a certain piece of ground on Sunday, and have the best crop in town. All was done up to threshing the wheat, which was being done, when a flash of lightning fired the barn; and the result of a summer's labor was destroyed.
Breaking the Sabbath can lead to a downward path culminating in serious sin and punishment.
A poor man, hung some time ago for the crime of murder, said the first step to his getting into crime was breaking the sabbath.
Ignoring the Sabbath rest harms mental health and leads to ruin and despair.
A distinguished merchant, who for twenty years did a vast amount of business, remarked to Dr.
Edwards, "Had it not been for the sabbath,
I have no doubt I should have been a maniac long ago." This was mentioned in a company of merchants, when one remarked, "That is the case exactly with Mr. —. He was one of our greatest importers. He used to say, that the sabbath was the best day in the week to plan successful voyages; showing that his mind had no sabbath. He has been in the insane-hospital for years, and will probably die there." Many men are there, or in the maniac's grave, because they had no sabbath. They broke a law of Nature, and of Nature's God, and found "the way of the transgressor to be hard." Such cases are so numerous, that a writer remarks, "We never knew a man work seven days in a week who did not kill himself or kill his mind."
