for them to undertake.  The fact is overlooked that these bonds are of their own creation, and that every end is beyond reach of him who refuses to take the means to that end.  Incapable, too, of conceiving a sphere of morality superior to that in which they move, and without further investigation of facts to make their induction good, they conclude that all men are like themselves; that open profession of morality is unadulterated hypocrisy, that a pure man is a living lie.  A more wholesale impeachment of human veracity and a more brutal indignity offered to human nature could scarcely be imagined.  Reason never argued thus; the heart has reasons which the reason cannot comprehend.  Truth to be loved needs only to be seen.  Adversely, it is the case with falsehood.

It is habitual with this passion to hide its hideousness under the disguise of love, and thus this most sacred and hallowed name is prostituted to signify that which is most vile and loathsome.  Depravity?  No.  Goodness of heart, generosity of affections, the very quintessence of good nature!  But God is love, and love that does not see the image of the Creator in its object is not love, but the brutal instinct.

There are some who do not go so far as to identify vice with virtue, but content themselves with esteeming that, since passion is so strong, virtue so difficult and God so merciful to His frail creatures, to yield a trifle is less a sin than a confession of native weakness.  This “weakness” runs a whole gamut of euphemisms; imperfections, foibles, frailties, mistakes, miseries, accidents, indiscretions—­anything to gloss it over, anything but what it is.  At this rate, you could efface the whole Decalogue and at one fell stroke destroy all laws, human and divine.  What is yielding to any passion but weakness?  Very few sins are sins of pure malice.  If one is weak through one’s own fault, and chooses to remain so rather than take the necessary means of acquiring strength, that one is responsible in full for the weakness.  The weak and naughty in this matter are plain, ordinary sinners of a very sable dye.

Theirs is not the view that God took of things when He purged the earth with water and destroyed the five cities with fire.  From Genesis to the Apocalypse you will not find a weakness against which He inveighs so strongly, and chastises so severely.  He forbids and condemns every deliberate yielding, every voluntary step taken over the threshold of moral cleanness in thought, word, desire or action.

The gravity and malice of sin is not to be measured by the fancies, opinions, theories or attitude of men.  The first and only rule is the will of God which is sufficiently clear to anyone who scans the sacred pages whereon it is manifested.  And the reason of His uncompromising hostility to voluptuousness can be found in the intrinsic malice of the evil.  In man, as God created him, the soul is superior to the body, and of its nature should rule and govern.  Lust inverts this order, and the flesh lords it over the spirit.  The image of God is defiled, dragged in the mire of filth and corruption, and robbed of its spiritual nature, as far as the thing is possible.  It becomes corporal, carnal, animal.  And thus the superior soul with its sublime faculties of intelligence and will is made to obey under the tyranny of emancipated flesh, and like the brute seeks only for things carnal.