Crime is not prevented
by toleration, but by prohibition. Nine of the ten commandments
are prohibitive and begin with: "Thou shalt not."
The success of life, the formation of character, is in proportion to
the courage one has to say to one's ownself: "Thou shalt not." It is
not the man or woman who has no temptation to sin, who has the strong
character, but the man or woman who has the desire but will not yield
to sin. Some people ask: "Why did God make the Devil?" The Devil
is God's fire. Like an alchemist God is purifying souls. The Devil is
an agent in salvation. "Every Devil in hell is harnessed up to push every
saint into heaven."
Those who are counted worthy to enter into the delights of that
heavenly land are those who have had their "fiery trials," tried and made
white. Man would have no credit and could not hear: "Good and faithful
servant;" if he had no temptations to do otherwise, man would be
but a mere machine.
God has never used for his work, any but those who prohibit evil.
The pilgrim fathers were forced from the mother country because this
principle of prohibition burned in their hearts. When England would
oppose the colonies, it was prohibition that smashed the tea, over in Boston
harbor. George Washington was put at the head of the colonial
armies that prohibited, by much bloodshed and suffering, the oppression
from the mother country. Our Civil War was the result of the principle
to abolish or prohibit the slavery of the colored race.
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