Character and Conduct – 24 May – Sin

WE judge of sins, as we judge of most things, by their outward form.   We arrange the vices of our neighbours according to a scale which society has tacitly adopted, placing the more gross and public at the foot, the slightly less gross higher up, and then by some strange process the scale becomes obliterated.   Finally it vanishes into space, leaving lengths of itself unexplored, its sins unnamed, unheeded, and unshunned.   But we have no balance to weigh sins.   Coarser and finer are but words of our own.   The chances are, if anything, that the finer are the lower.   The very fact that the world sees the coarser sins so well is against the belief that they are the worst.   The subtle and unseen sin, that sin in the part of the nature most near to the spiritual, ought to be more degrading than any other.   Yet for many of the finer forms of sin society has yet no brand.

The Ideal Life, HENRY DRUMMOND

TRIED by final tests, and reduced to its essential elements, sin is the preference of self to God, and the assertion of the human will against the Will of God.  With Jesus, from first to last, sin is selfishness.

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON

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These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing the her readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.