SELF-DENIAL SAFE | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 15.

SELF-DENIAL SAFE.

Is self-indulgence safer, as a rule, than self-denial? Most persons act as if they thought so. Ten persons will insist that they ought not to give up any personal gratification unless they can point to some good reason why they should give it up, where one person will insist that he ought not to follow his personal inclinations, without being able to suggest some good reason for his doing so. It obviously requires more character to deny one's self than to indulge one's self; yet people rather pride themselves on their refusal to deny themselves any gratification without a very good reason for their self-denial.

Inclination is by no means identical with duty. And because it is so much easier to follow inclination than to resist it, a man ought to be even more rigorous in demanding of himself a good reason for doing what he wants to do, than for not doing what he would like to do. "Only convince me that it is my duty to give up wine or tobacco, and I will give it up at once," says one, who never for a moment thought of saying, with equal emphasis, "I would never use wine or tobacco, unless I were convinced that it is my duty to use it." And so of many another personal indulgence of the sort. What a difference it would make in the conduct of Christians generally, if they were as rigid in doing nothing but what they deem it their duty to do, as in refusing to surrender what they do not deem it their duty to surrender! But self-indulgence is so easy, and self-denial is so hard! There is the real pinch of the matter! —Selected.