May 19

“Seldom in any case, and never save by the special grace of God, do guilty thoughts end in guilty thoughts; they are but the serpent’s egg, from which breaks forth the cockatrice. On us, as on Eve, at some unguarded moment, the temptation springs, ‘terrible and with tiger’s leap’, and then we fall; we fall and we pity ourselves because we fall in a moment, but that fall is the fall not of a moment but of all the previous life; it was but the ‘sign manual of deed’ which sooner or later the powers of evil demand from him who in heart has long been their own.”

“A little seed
Of sin was grown that grew with little heed.
By door or window little sins will win
A way that widens for the larger sin.
As tiniest lichens, climbing up the wall,
May lend a hand to help the ivy crawl
That is to tower a conqueror over all
The house in ruin, crumbling by the fall.
Once life is set in motion there upspring
Infinite issues to the smallest thing.”

GERALD MASSEY