The victim pauses, gazes around upon the scene about his path of sin, and whispers, “Is it harmless?” “Harmless!” responds a serpent from the grass. Harmless! echo the sighing winds. Harmless! re-echo a hundred airy tongues.
If now a gale from heaven might only sweep the clouds away through which the victim gazes! O, it God would break that potent power which chains the blasts of hell, and let the sulphur-stench roll up the vale, how would the vision change—the road become a track of dead men’s bones, the heavens a lowering storm, the balmy breezes distant wailings, and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses sweat drops of blood upon their poison boughs!
Ye who are meddling with the edges of vice, ye are on this road, and utterly duped by its enchantments.
Your eye has already lost its honest glance, your taste has lost its purity, your heart throbs with poison. The leprosy is all over you; its blotches and eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slippery places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you refuse the warning which I raise.— BEECHER.
