The Apostle stands like a jailer at the prison door, with the fatal roll
in his hand, and reads out the names of the evil doers for whom the
tumbril waits to carry them to the guillotine. It is an ugly list but we
need plain speaking that there may be no mistake as to the identity of
the culprits. He enumerates evils which honeycombed society with
rottenness then, and are rampant now. The series recounts various forms
of evil love, and is so arranged as that it starts with the coarse,
gross act, and goes on to more subtle and inward forms. It goes up the
stream as it were, to the fountain head, passing inward from deed to
desire. First stands "fornication," which covers the whole ground of
immoral sexual relations, then "all uncleanness," which embraces every
manifestation in word or look or deed of the impure spirit, and so is at
once wider and subtler than the gross physical act. Then follow
"passion" and "evil desire"; the sources of the evil deeds. These again
are at once more inward and more general than the preceding. They
include not only the lusts and longings which give rise to the special
sins just denounced, but all forms of hungry appetite and desire after
"the things that are upon the earth." If we are to try to draw a
distinction between the two, probably "passion" is somewhat less wide
than "desire," and the former represents the evil emotion as an
affection which the mind suffers, while the latter represents it as a
longing which it actively puts forth. The "lusts of the flesh" are in
the one aspect kindled by outward temptations which come with terrible
force and carry men captive, acting almost irresistibly on the animal
nature. In the other aspect they are excited by the voluntary action of
the man himself. In the one the evil comes into the heart; in the other
the heart goes out to the evil.
Then follows covetousness. The juxtaposition of that vice with the
grosser forms of sensuality is profoundly significant. It is closely
allied with these. It has the same root, and is but another form of evil
desire going out to the "things which are on the earth." The ordinary
worldly nature flies for solace either to the pleasures of appetite or
to the passion of acquiring. And not only are they closely connected in
root, but covetousness often follows lust in the history of a life just
as it does in this catalogue. When the former evil spirit loses its
hold, the latter often takes its place. How many respectable middle-aged
gentlemen are now mainly devoted to making money, whose youth was foul
with sensual indulgence? When that palled, this came to titillate the
jaded desires with a new form of gratification. Covetousness is
"promoted _vice_, lust superannuated."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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