p. 294 | THE RIGHT by M. E. Steward

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, May 6, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 19

THE RIGHT.

By M. E. Steward

BY MRS. M. E. STEWARD.

There is as broad a distinction between right and wrong as between the light of the mid-day sun and the gloom of the darkest night. Yes, more so; since eternal consequences are involved in the matter of right and wrong. The principles of right are the essence of the divine character. Their transgression shut Satan with his angels forever out of Heaven. The unyielding nature of right made the sufferings and death of the Saviour necessary in order that we might be justified. Though bearing the greatest provocation that the powerful mind of Satan could invent, yet in no instance did he deviate in the very slightest degree from the line of right. It was impossible for him to do this and maintain perfection. He could suffer every indignity and cruelty that the combined forces of men and devils could invent; he could “die in despair,” “realizing nothing but a sense of sin and of his Father’s displeasure;” but he could not swerve from principle.

Two lines of action are ever before us. The Lord has shown that everything has its moral character—has a right and a wrong. Few have to do with the right as existing in great responsibilities, but all have to meet the very same principles of integrity and unselfishness as they underlie the little things of life. Now he who offends in the least is as guilty of violating right principles as he who offends in the greater. Is not a falsehood, for instance, in a trivial affair as much a falsehood as in some great matter?

God judges not as man does. The little indulgences of perverted appetite or passion violate the great principle of right, and sometimes bring as terrible consequences as those we recognize as great sins. When we transgress, we become responsible for all the possible results of that transgression. “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes.” Cant. 2:15.