[1] There is many a man who evinces, for a time, a steadfast
attention to religion, walking with all care in the path of
God's commandments, &c., but who, after awhile, declines
from spirituality, and is dead, though he may yet have a
name to life. But how does it commonly happen that such a
man falls away from the struggle for salvation? Is it
ordinarily through some one powerful and undisguised
assault that he is turned from the faith, or over one huge
obstacle that he falls not to rise again? Not so. It is
almost invariably through little things. He fails to take
notice of little things, and they accumulate into great. He
allows himself in little things, and thus forms a strong
habit. He relaxes in little things, and thus in time
loosens every bond. Because it is a little thing, he counts
it of little moment, utterly forgetting that millions are
made up of units, that immensity is constituted of atoms.
Because it is only a stone, a pebble, against which his
foot strikes, he makes light of the hindrance; not caring
that he is contracting a habit of stumbling, or of
observing that whenever he trips there must be some
diminution in the speed with which he runs the way of God's
commandments, and that, however slowly, these diminutions
are certainly bringing him to a stand.
The astronomer tells us, that, because they move in a
resisting medium, which perhaps in a million of years
destroys the millionth part of their velocity, the heavenly
bodies will at length cease from their mighty march. May
not, then, the theologian assure us that little roughnesses
in the way, each retarding us, though in an imperceptible
degree, will eventually destroy the onward movement,
however vigorous and direct it may at one time have seemed?
Would to God that we could persuade you of the peril of
little offences! We are not half as much afraid of your
hurting the head against a rock, as of your hurting the
foot against a stone. There is a sort of continued
attrition, resulting from our necessary intercourse with
the world, which of itself deadens the movements of the
soul; there is, moreover, a continued temptation to yield
in little points, under the notion of conciliating; to
indulge in little things, to forego little strictnesses, to
omit little duties; and all with the idea that what looks
so light cannot be of real moment. And by these littles,
thousands, tens of thousands, perish. If they do not come
actually and openly to a stand, they stumble and stumble
on, getting more and more careless, nearer and nearer to
indifference, lowering the Christian standards, suffering
religion to be peeled away by inches, persuading themselves
that they can spare without injury such inconsiderable
bits, and not perceiving that in stripping the bark they
stop the sap.--_Melvill._