That would be a
temptation indeed; one all the more dangerous because there is, I am
told, another sort of coral snake perfectly harmless, which is so exactly
like the deadly one, that no child, and few grown people, can know them
apart.
Even so it is with our worst temptations. They look sometimes so exactly
like what is good and noble and useful and religious, that we mistake the
evil for the good, and play with it till it stings us, and we find out
too late that the wages of sin are death. Thus religious people, just
because they are religious, are apt to be specially tempted to mistake
evil for good, to do something specially wrong, when they think they are
doing something specially right, and so give occasion to the enemies of
the Lord to blaspheme; till, as a hard and experienced man of the world
once said: "Whenever I hear a man talking of his conscience, I know that
he is going to do something particularly foolish; whenever I hear of a
man talking of his duty, I know that he is going to do something
particularly cruel."
Do I say this to frighten you away from being religious? God forbid.
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