A little newsboy, to sell his paper, told a lie. The matter came up in the Sunday school. “Would you tell a lie for a penny?” asked a young lady teacher of one of her boys. “No ma’am,” he answered very decidedly. “For sixpence, then? No ma’am.” “For a shilling? “No, ma’am?” “For a thousand shillings?” Dick was staggered. A thousand shillings looked big. Wouldn’t it buy a lot of things? While he was thinking, another boy behind him called out, “No, ma’am.” “Why not?” asked the teacher. “Because,” said the boy, “when the thousand shillings are all gone, and all the things they’ve got with them have gone too, the lie is there, all the same.” It is so. A lie sticks. Everything else may be gone, but that is left, and it must be carried with you, whether you will or not.
Heredity not wholly a disadvantage
A young man complains to Jupiter that in consequence of his father’s debaucheries he is pierced with pangs and punished with pains for sins not his own. Jupiter replies that in accordance with the very law of which he complains, he also receives from his father delicate nerves, vigorous muscles, and keen senses which are inlets of joy and many noble capacities and faculties of mind and heart. Jupiter offers in his case to suspend the offensive organic law; but warns him that, in losing his pain, he shall also lose all advantages and benefits through that same law of hereditary descent. And he further reminds him that even his pain is a monitor to warn him from the paths of vice trodden by his father. The sufferer withdraws his complaint, resigns himself, and resolves by pious obedience to all bodily laws to bring back his body to a normal and healthy state. (Combe on the ”Constitution of Man. ”)
Continuity of evil influences
Suppose a company of shipowners started a sea captain with an imperfect chart and with an unseaworthy vessel, and after the vessel has been gone five days they feel sorry about it, and wish they had not let the vessel go out in that way. Does that make any difference to those who have gone out? No! In the first storm the captain and the crew go down. And if you come to God in the latter part of your life, when you have given your children an impulse in the wrong direction, those ten, or fifteen, or twenty years of example in the wrong direction will be mightier than the few words you can utter now in the right direction. So it is with the influence you have had anywhere in community. If you have all these years given countenance to those who are neglecting religion, can you correct that? (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Heredity may transmit predisposition to disease
We know from experience that a full measure of health is not often the happy condition of human tissues; we have, in short, a variety of circumstances which, as we say, predispose the individual to disease. One of the commonest forms of predisposition is that due to heredity. Probably it is true that what are known as hereditary diseases are due far more to a hereditary predisposition than to any transmission of the virus itself in any form. Antecedent disease predisposes the tissues to form a nidus for bacteria; conditions of environment or personal habits frequently act in the same way. Damp soils must be held responsible for many disasters to health, not directly, but indirectly, by predisposition; dusty trades and injurious occupations have a similar effect. Any one of these three different influences may in a variety of ways affect the tissues and increase their susceptibility to disease. Not infrequently we may get them combined. (Newman,“Bacteria.”)
Verse 27 The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever.--
Gehazi smitten with leprosy
The sin which led to this punishment suggests--
I. That it is a mark of the highest contempt of the Holy God to link His name with our sinful purposes. “As the Lord liveth,” said Gehazi, “I will take somewhat of him” (2Ki_5:20). To stamp base metal with the image and name of the king is regarded as a great crime against the country and the monarch. How much greater the crime of stamping upon our evil actions the name of God. Yet some of the most diabolical acts that stain the page of history have been wrought in the name of the sinless Redeemer.
II. That the transgression of the first table of the moral law is a step to the transgression of the second. The man who will speak lightly of a good master will find it an easy matter to misrepresent the character of his fellow-servant. The child who dishonours a good parent will not be likely to be a kind brother. Those who “fear not God,” will as a rule “regard not men” (Luk_18:2). The sin against the less, comes easily after the sin against the greater. Gehazi first profaned the name of God, and then wronged his earthly master.
III. That those who will lie in order to deceive, must lie in order to conceal. Gehazi’s lie to Naaman wassoon followed by another to Elisha. It has been said that “a lie has no legs.” There are men in the world who have no limbs upon which they can walk, and are indebted to the artificial help of crutches to make their way in the world. So a lie must be kept up by the crutches of other lies. The punishment for the sinteaches--That those who sin and seek to cover it by concealment, will be compelled, in time, to be the means of its revelation. (OutlinesofSermonsbyaLondonMinister.)
