Respectable Sins Can Deaden The Conscience

In the first place, sin that is respectable has an unequaled power of deadening the conscience.

In the mirror of the society he moves in, a man sees nothing to alarm or terrify.

When you glance at the mirror in the morning, and see the usual signs of health upon your face, you take it for granted, in a general way, that you are in your customary well-being.

And so when in the mirror of society a man detects no sign of disapproval, he too is apt to think that all is well.

No one around suggests that there is danger; and so the feeling of danger disappears.

Others are not shocked by what we do, and so we come not to be shocked ourselves. 

So is born that deadliest of states, in which we are complacent and self-satisfied; no longer ill at ease with our own selves, because others are not ill at ease with us. 

Think of the Pharisee and publican in our Lord's parable. The publican could never forget he was despised.

He saw it in the face of every child, in the contemptuous looks of every woman.

Wherever he went his sin was mirrored to him in the attitude of every honourable Jew.

He tried to disguise what he was from his own heart, but his society stripped his disguise away.

His was a disreputable sin, but it was not the most dangerous of sins.

There was a warning in every man he met, in every child who drew away from him.

Until at last, utterly sick at heart, and with a conscience stabbed into activity, he flung himself upon the Temple floor, crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner.''

Now compare with that, the Pharisee. He had no mirror to show him to himself.

There was nothing in the society he moved in to warn him of what he was in God's sight.

He read himself in the respect of others; came quietly to accept the general estimate, until his heart was hard, his conscience deadened, and himself on the verge of being damned.

Had his sin cast him out of human fellowship, he never would have been tempted so.

Had honourable doors been barred on him he would have soon lost his self-complacency.

And so you see his peril lay in this--not in the bare fact that he was sinful; but in the deadening of conscience that had come, because his sin was perfectly respectable.

~George H. Morrison~