We sometimes let a great evil run on in our lives in the indefinite hope that something may happen some time and some how and remove it from us painlessly, or at least without the exertion of our will. We dread the pain of tearing it out of our lives. We think we could not endure the suffering if we resolutely severed the tie or association or abjured the gain or the pleasure or whatever it be that makes the sin sweet. We shudder at the thought of a quick stroke cutting off forever that curse from our existence; yet, unwilling to altogether renounce our God, we comfort ourselves with the hope that time will slowly wear it off. Alas, my brother! If you escape hell at all--and it is doubtful, seeing how you are entangled and overcome--what suffering is before you, suffering incomparably greater than that which the renunciation you are now unwilling to make would cost you! The best way to avoid injury from a flying ball is to stand and face and catch it; for if you shrink and it hits you, it will hurt much worse. A foot is a priceless thing, a hand even more so, and an eye is not to be estimated for value; but there are circumstances when the loss of these would be actual profit--the loss inconsiderable in comparison to the gain, and the injury, great as it is, not to be compared with the greater calamity that comes of the effort of keeping them. So whatever it be that holds you in the bonds of sin, be it persons or things, be it sweet and dear and valuable to you even as hand or foot or eye, hearken to the Savior--he knows best, he is the true Friend--"cut it off," "pluck it out," "cast it from thee;" for it were better for thee to go into life crippled and blind than to keep all and be cast into the eternal fire. You would probably find that the pang of the severance is not so terrible as you had anticipated, [109] and that the peace of God then yours would go far to mitigate any suffering you had incurred for him; but however this may be, at any rate, tear that evil out of your life; kill, slay utterly; let not thy hand spare nor thine eye pity.

[TAG 109-110]