"The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous life
of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast;
it is that life which otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble,
but in which one sin is fostered, one vice indulged.
To the soul that is struggling in secret against some giant temptation,
trembling upon the very verge of the precipice,
such an example is one of the most powerful enticements to sin.
He who, endowed with high conceptions of life and truth and honor, does yet willfully transgress one precept of God's holy law, has perverted His noble gifts into a lure to sin. Genius, talent, sympathy, even generous and kindly deeds, may become decoys of Satan to entice other souls over the precipice of ruin for this life and the life to come."
Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing p.94 E.G.W.
Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life,
is not of the Father,
but is of the world.
1 John 2:15, 16
