Disobedience. This is the sin that is ready to grip us as soon as we tumble over the side of the cradle of life. She went wrong just by disobeying her parents; at least most little folks do, and I suppose she was just like the rest of us. Once there was a prisoner who sat in his cell awaiting the fast approaching hour of his execution. While he was thus waiting, with a piece of clay he drew on the wall of his cell a picture of the gallows upon which he was soon to die. He made a number of steps which led up to it, and called each step after a sin which he had done that soon would lead him up to his doom on the gallows. The first step he marked was "Disobedience to Parents." That was his first great sin, as he saw it. Now take a small black card on which you have written the word "Disobedience" and put it into the heart. This is the first devil.
The next polluting power which entered the heart we will call "Sinful Dress." In the land where Mary Magdalene was raised the people dressed in gay colors, and wore much and very elaborate jewelry on the ankles, arms, neck, and head; there they placed their bands of gold. They had large opportunity to overdo the dress question, and they did so. The rich owned many changes of raiment, and often like the leaders of fashion today could boast that they could change their costumes hourly if they so desired. She was doubtless very beautiful and charming. Her Oriental garments made her look like a queen in royal splendor. She soon "fell" for this polluting poison called "fashion," and like millions of her present-day sisters her feet got tangled up in her robes of fashion, and she slipped and fell from the pinnacle of purity into the madly burning lake of sin. As you make this remark drop in the heart a pink card on which the words "Sinful Dress" have been written. This is the second devil.
Make it clear to your hearers that carefulness in dress is not wrong, and neatness is not vanity.
Now produce a blue card on which you have marked two large letters "CO.," which stands for "Company."
Soon Mary Magdalene found evil company as did the Prodigal Son and soon she was a common sinner.
Evil company is like evil spirits seeking to pull down to their level the highest and best. As you say this deposit this card into the heart and say, "This is the third devil."
The next devil to enter the heart we will call "Bad Money."
Write down on a yellow card the dollar sign ($), and say that once a minister of the gospel read from his pulpit a request for prayer which was as follows: "Prayers are requested for a young man who has just inherited a fortune."
He certainly did need the prayers of good people, because money can be made a mighty curse unless God is in it. Money is like a skeleton key which unlocks a multitude of sin doors through which we enter to the eternal hurt of our soul. Mary Magdalene found it paid for a season in dollars and cents, but this is tainted money and slips through the fingers, and on wings supplied from the demons themselves flies away to come back no more forever. "His money was his curse," that the people often say when like a devil it has entered and destroyed a human heart. We are now speaking only of the evil use of money. Put the card with the dollar mark on it into the heart and say, This is the fourth devil.
"Temper" is the next devil to enter the sinner's heart. Write this word down on a fiery red card. In anger folks seem to be under control of another power; they do not seem like themselves. There is a strange look in the eye, another expression has seized the features of the face, and they seem for a few moments to be "changed into other men." The reason for all of this transformation is that temper is a devil, and it has taken possession of the heart.