If it is a clear case of proximate occasion of sin, and all means fail to change it, then the supposition of impossibility is a ridiculous one.  It is paramount to asserting that sin and offense of God is sometimes necessary; and to talk thus is to talk nonsense.  Sin is a deliberate act of a free will; mention necessity in the same breath, and you destroy the notion of sin.  There can never be an impossibility of avoiding sin; consequently, there can never be an impossibility of avoiding a near occasion of sin.

It may be hard, very difficult; but that is another thing.  But, as we have already said, the difficulty is rather within than without us, it arises from a lack of will power.  But hard or easy, these occasions must nevertheless be removed.  Let the suffering entailed be what it may, the eye must be plucked out, the arm must be lopped off, to use the Saviour’s figurative language, if in no other way the soul can be saved from sin.  Better to leave your father’s house, better to give up your very life, than to damn your soul for all eternity.  But extremes are rarely called for; small sacrifices often cost more than great ones.  A good dose of ordinary, everyday mortification and penance goes a long way toward producing the necessary effect.  An ounce of self-denial will work miracles in a sluggard, cowardly soul.

It would be well on occasion to remember this, especially when one in such a state is thinking seriously of going to confession:  if he is not prepared to make the required effort, then he had better stay away until such a time as he is willing.  For if he states his case correctly, he will not receive absolution; if his avowal is not according to fact, his confession is void, perhaps sacrilegious.  Have done with sin before you can expect to have your sins forgiven.

CHAPTER LXXXI.  SCANDAL.

On only rare occasions do people who follow the bent of their unbridled passions bethink themselves of the double guilt that frequently attaches to their sins.  Seemingly satisfied with the evil they have wrought unto their own souls, they choose to ignore the wrong they may have done unto others as a consequence of their sinful doings.  They believe in the principle that every soul is personally responsible for its own damnation:  which is true; but they forget that many elements may enter as causes into such a calamity.  We are in nowise isolated beings in this world; our lives may, and do, affect the lives of others, and influence them sometimes to an extraordinary extent.  We shall have, each of us, to answer one day for results of such influence; there is no man but is, in this sense, his brother’s guardian.

There are, who deny this, like Cain.  Yet we Icnow that Jesus Christ spoke clearly His mind in regard to scandal, and the emphasis He lays on His anathemas leaves no room to doubt of His judgment on the subject.  Scandal, in fact, is murder; not corporal murder, which is a vengeance-crying abomination, but spiritual murder, heinous over the other in the same measure as the soul’s value transcends that of the body.  Kill the body, and the soul may live and be saved; kill the soul and it is lost eternally.