The saying which Rev. W. H. Fitchett attributes to John Wesley’s sister reminds one of Christ’s petition, “I pray not that thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou wouldst keep them from its evil.”
Patty Wesley kept her intellect bright, wore a serene face amid all troubles, and by the sheer charm of her mental qualities became one of Dr. Johnson’s most intimate and valued companions. “Evil,” she once said, “was not kept from me, but evil has been kept from harming me.”—“Wesley and His Century.”
(960)
EVIL GERMINAL
One evil contains within itself the possibilities of all evil. Medical writers have now much to tell touching the convertibility of disease. They have come to the conclusion that the constitutional defect appearing in a family in one generation is not necessarily transmitted in that exact form to succeeding generations. What appears at one time as insanity will reveal itself at another as epilepsy or paralysis; convulsions will reassert themselves as hysteria or insanity; insanity is converted into a tendency to suicide; the suicidal tendency will become a mania for drinking; what is neuralgia in the father may be melancholia in the son; what is deformity in one generation may be apoplexy in the next. In an afflicted family the constitutional defect has curious ramifications, and undergoes strange metamorphoses.
It is much the same with evil. Men will indulge in one vice, while they express the utmost abhorrence of other vices of which they could never think themselves susceptible. But this is a mistake. All evils are one in root and essence; and surrendering ourselves to one form of iniquity, we surrender ourselves to all; changing circumstances and temptations will involve the lawbreaker in other sins, and in aggravated guilt.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(961)
When the father of William the Conqueror was departing for the Holy Land, he called together the peers of Normandy and required them to swear allegiance to his young son, who was a mere infant; when the barons smiled at the feeble babe, the king promptly replied, “He is little, but he will grow.” He did grow, and the babyhand ere long ruled the nations as with a rod of iron.
The same may be said of evil in its slenderest beginning, in its most inocuous form: “It is little, but it will grow.” In its beginning it is a fancy, a flash of thought, a look, a word, a touch, a gesture, a tone, an accent, an embryo that no microscope could detect; but at last it is a Cain, a Judas, a Nero. The acorn-cup yields the upas-tree; out of a spark flashes hell.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”