One whose mind turns to debasing things, things
unholy, unclean, will find his whole soul bending and growing toward
the earth in permanent moral curvature.
There is also a bending of the life by sorrow. The experience of
sorrow is scarcely less perilous than that of temptation. The common
belief is that grief always makes people better. But this is not true.
If the sufferer submits to God with loving confidence, and is
victorious through faith, sorrow's outcome is blessing and good. But
many are crushed by their sorrow. They yield to it, and it bears them
down beneath its weight. They turn their faces away from heaven's blue
and the light of God, toward the grave's darkness, and their souls grow
toward the gloom.
Here is a mother who several years since lost by death a beautiful
daughter. The mother was a Christian woman, and her child was also a
Christian, dying in sweet hope. Yet never since that coffin was closed
has the mother lifted up her eyes toward God in submission and hope.
She visits the cemetery on Sundays, but never the church. She goes
with downcast look about her home, weeping whenever her daughter's name
is mentioned, and complains of God's hardness and unkindness in taking
away her child. She is bent down with her eyes to the earth, and sees
only the clods and the dust and the grave's gloom, and sees not the
blue sky, the bright stars, and the sweet face of the Father.
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