Evil thought

“ "Good and evil! good and evil!" thought he; "ye are mingled inextricably in the web of our being; and who may unthread the darker yarn?" ”

“ His intellect, we are told, is utterly and spiritually darkened, his will the slave of sin, set to work iniquity greedily, his imagination corrupt, his passions rebellious, his affections perverted, incapable of good in thought, word, or deed, and completely devoted to evil. Taking this view as correct, we might suppose the prime use of man’s understanding was to devise wickedness, of his memory to prolong the thoughts of it, of his will to form only guilty resolves, and of his passions to riot in all that is vile and ungodly. ”

“ But there is this terrible thing in evil thoughts, that evil minds soon grow familiar with them. ”

“ But evil is wrought by want of Thought,
As well as want of Heart!" ”

“ Purge me from every sinful blot;
My idols all be cast aside:
Cleanse me from every evil thought;
From all the filth of self and pride. ”

“ Sect. XV. “How many evil thoughts do we not think every day! How many deceitful and unseemly words do we not speak! How many unseemly deeds do we not do! Thus do we prepare torments for ourselves by crimes and frauds. Since we have walked body and soul in the love of the greedy and shameless Demon of Envy, and the Light of the Five Gods which we absorb in our food every day thereby goes to the Land of Evil. Wherefore, O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! ”

“ And then the soul is led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. ”

“ Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil's hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity. ”

“ For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man."—Verses 20-23. ”

“ If evil thoughts at any time enter into the mind of a good man, he does not roll them under his tongue as a sweet morsel, but they are grievous and painful to him; ”

“ Who can tell whether the satisfaction derived from evil can ever penetrate to the soul, unless there mingle with it a vague desire, a promise, a distant hope, of goodness or of pity?
The joy of the wretch whose victim lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed in its gloom and futility, save by the thought of mercy that flashes across him. Evil at times would seem compelled to beg a ray of light from virtue, to shed lustre on its triumph. Is it possible for a man to smile in his hatred and not borrow the smile of love? ”

“ Again, evil thoughts, whether they are against charity, or against chastity, or against faith—whether they are thoughts of pride, of hatred, or envy, or avaricious thoughts—insomuch as they are concealed from the sight of others, do not cause the same shame to the guilty person as an overt act would. ”

“ He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but evil thoughts generate all evil actions.
An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts uncontrollably drag one along that path. ”

“ And does not the charge of a partiality condemned by the law lie fully against you? Does not your own conscience tell you that you are guilty?" Appeals to conscience are of great advantage, when we have to do with such as make a profession, even though they may have fallen into a very corrupt state. 2. This respect of persons is owing to the evil and injustice of the thoughts. As the temper, conduct, and proceedings, are partial, so the heart and thoughts, from which all flows, are evil: " You have become judges of evil thoughts ”

“ Since we approached that world from without, and never felt the pulse of its heart's blood, we had nothing but doubt after doubt when we contemplated the evil that seemed to be in it. Our efforts to explain evil seemed hollow and worthless. ”

“ Such is indeed the only present word for us finite minds about many of the shadows of seeming evil that we have to behold in the world of the apparently external facts. Such however is not the last word for us about the only evil that has any immediate moral significance, namely, the evil that we see, not as an external, shadowy mist, but as a present fact, experienced in us. ”

“ Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these, if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing [pg 131] evil, if you please so to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart. ”

“ How could there be an evil act which did not proceed from an antecedent evil principle or disposition? What becomes of the great common notion of mankind, on which his demonstration is erected? But we must allow the author to contradict himself, since he has now come around to the truth, that an evil act of the creature may and must have preceded the existence of moral evil in the world. ”

“ But no possible good, but incalculable evil may and does arise from the too common practice of placing all conduct, the source of which we do not fully understand, to the worst of intentions. How often is the gentle, timid soul discouraged, and driven perhaps to despondency, by finding its 'good evil spoken of;' and a well-meant but mistaken action loaded with an evil design! ”

“ If we harbour vindictiveness, hatred, malice, and a spirit that produces evil within us, we are so far given up to the power of evil. But when I say that I am opposed to evil principles and their consequent practices, I use an expression that I think you can understand. ”

“ To reason, justify, to apotheosize evil, to establish its ritual, to show the excellence of it—is this not worse than to commit it? To adore the demon, or love evil, the abstract or the concrete term of one and the same fact. ”

“ And certain things, though good and pure, when mixed, produce discordant things, yea, poisonous things, that men call evil things.
14. So evil is the inharmonious blending of the colours, tones, or forms of good.
15. Now, man is not all-wise, and yet has will his own. He has the power, and he uses it, to mix God's good things in a multitude of ways, and every day he makes discordant sounds, and evil things.
16. And every tone and form, be it of good, or ill, becomes a living thing, a demon, sprite, or spirit of a good or vicious kind.
17. Man makes his evil thus ”

“ In former days it was—"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." What is the fruit of the spirit of evil? Envy, malice, hatred, evil-speaking, lying and slandering one another and towards other people. ”

“ Now I do not wish that you should suppose that I minimize evil, that I make light of sin, that I do not properly estimate the cruelties and the wrongs that have devastated the world. I need only suggest to you that you look in this direction and that to see how hideous all these evils may be; how bitter, how cruel, is the fruit of wrong thoughts and of wrong actions. Look at a man, for example, divine in the possibilities of his being, but through vice, through drink, through habits of one kind and another, corrupted until it is an insult to a brute to call him brutal. ”

“ The follies and the vices, the weariness and the sadness, the discontent and the moroseness of life, all spring from the want of a just conception of its relations and its value, such as can be attained only by calm, deliberate reflection, out of which wise opinions evolve, and are gradually shaped into a creed such as forms the bone and muscle of a wise and noble Character.
Evil is ever the result of the abuse of some good; for nothing was created evil. ”

“ They may talk of universal benevolence, but facts are too strong for them. They meet evil everywhere; they meet it in themselves. They do not like to say,—'It is an evil will to which I am yielding up my will. Because men are obeying this evil will, therefore there is misery and ugliness in this blessed and beautiful world.' They try to escape from that confession. They talk of evil in nature, of evil in themselves. ”

“ For in the world of our own acts we have a wondrous experience. We realize evil, we fight it, and, at the same time, we realize our fragment of the perfect divine life in the moment itself of struggling with the evil. And in this wondrous experience lies the whole solution of the ancient problem of the existence of moral evil. For instance, I find in myself a selfish impulse, trying to destroy the moral insight. ”

“ But I realized that the evil, or the good—for why call love an evil?—had penetrated into the most remote regions of my being, and I realized the energy of my struggle like a person entombed who tries to extricate himself. ”

“ How simple also the solution of the problem of evil! “If I want to do evil, I cannot,” said the objector; “for God the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral difference in action possible.” ”

“ Out of evil, evil will come. We do not gather figs of thistles. Your life has been evil; your heart is bad. Can good emanate from this? You will go forth to the world in fair seeming, no trace of your sin visible to the eye, and you will spread the contagion of your sin. Listen to me, Myron Holder. ”

“ And by knowing the evil leaven, and its divers evil effects in ourselves, how it had wrought, and what it had done, we came to have a sense and knowledge of the states of others: and what we could not, nay, we dare not let live and continue in ourselves, as being manifested to us to proceed from an evil principle in the time of man's degeneracy, we could not comply with in others. ”

“ Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. ”

“ This evil thing winds through all the inlets of the senses, moulds itself in forms, blends with colors, weds with sounds, lurks in anger and guileful speech, clothes itself in scents, transfuses itself in savors, and by a flood of troublous movement obscures the mind with evil desires, and fills with vapor the channels of the understanding, through which the soul's ray might shed the light of reason. ”

“ Have you--in all your life of idle, vicious, luxury--have you ever feared to do evil if it appealed to your bestial nature? You know you have not. You have feared only the appearance of evil. To be as evil as you like so long as you can avoid the appearance of evil ”

“ The half kills, the whole gives life. Why canst thou not do any absolute evil? Because thy evil intent, which, in its separateness, would be unmixed evil, thy selfish will, thy struggle against the moral insight, this evil will of thine is no lonesome fact in the world, but is an element in the organic life of God. ”

“ How can I speak my gratitude to heaven and thy teaching, which brought me so swiftly, so wonderfully, to prevail with that dread man! I think evil is like the false opal, which needs but the first touch of pure light to shatter it. ”

“ Oh, the more we think of it, the darker does the history grow,—the faster does the descent of the evil spirit become, clown that pit which, from its very nature, seems to be bottomless! If means are discoverable there more suited to gain the end of moral regeneration than any which exist here, let them be pointed out. We have searched in vain to find them in the Word of God, or in the mind and history of man. ”

“ Yet, at times, every man, who has any degree of spirituality whatever, or even any knowledge of religious truth, by the light of which he may be able to distinguish evil from good—feels that he is evil, that he has terrible evils within himself. ”

“ The origin of evil, the ineradicable tendency of the human heart to sin and do evil, the mournful spectacle of ruin and desolation in the moral world, and the future life are the same inscrutable mysteries to us as to them. ”

“ We appeal to the moral experience to illustrate how, when we do good, the evil will is present as a real fact in us, which yet does not make us as a whole bad, but just because it is present as an overcome element, is, even for that very reason, necessary to make us good. ”

“ Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. 'Your thoughts'; 'your ways,'—self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-evils of humanity. And every sin is at bottom the result of saying—'I will not conform myself to God, but I am going to please myself, and take my own way.' My own way is never God's way; my own way is always the devil's way. ”

“ Every soul born into life must possess the attributes of taste, reason, conscience and emotion. And each of these attributes implies this fundamental duality; being resolvable into a choice between hideousness, falsehood, evil, malice, and the opposites of these. But the soul itself, being a living and personal thing, can never, however deeply it plunges into evil, become the embodiment of evil, because by the mere fact of existing at all it has already defeated evil. ”

“ Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it objectively: “It is somehow a part of the universal good;” but, in the moment of moral action I make it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences; and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms and is, together with the evil, the organic total that constitutes the good will. Only through this inner victory over the evil that is experienced as a conquered tendency does the good will have its being. ”