Satan's Relatives

New Zealand Tablet, 20 September 1906, Page 9

Satan's Relatives

' Take home one of Satan's relations ', says- an -old and wise proverb, 'and the whole family will follow '. Principiis obsta '-: { resist the ■beginnings. '— the little violations of conscience, the little yield ings to expediency at the ccfet of principle, the little c *devi- ' ations from the narrow path of right a;nd duty. These are the small members of Satan's family, entering like burglar Sikes's apprentices through the unguarded windows of your soul ; and they,. once. in,l will open a way to the father of their clan, who will* rifle your souls of their richest and best treasures. ' I tell you ',« said the old German. Emperor William 1., 'it is "the unfastened button that loses a battle ', It was a burrowing crayfish that let* loose the " de-~ vastating waters of the Charleston reservoir. A seem- - ingly little thing is never a little thing when it opens the flood gates of evil, or makes the difference between right and wrong. ' When Infinite Wisdom ', said Wendell Phillips at the election of President Lincoln in 1860, 'established the rules of -" right and honesty, He saw to it that right should always be the highest expediency.' A reminder to those weak and vacillating souls who act too often as if the 'morally right may be the personally or socially wrong or inexpedient.