An old fashioned warning

Nothing from Holy Scripture today - at least not directly - but from 19th century English Literature, the great novel Silas Marner, by George Eliot (otherwise known as Mary Ann Evans Cross).  This is a novel worth reading and re-reading (which I was doing at the barber shop yesterday).  Sometimes there is stark truthfulness even in fiction.  The narrator is explaining the state of mind of one of the main characters, Godfrey Cass:

"The yoke a man creates for himself by wrongdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature..."*

Wrongdoing is a yoke and one is not easily freed of it.  It persists in causing mischief long after the commitment of the wrong.  Such a simple statement, but one that needs to be said more than it is in our super-information age.  Our most admired citizens talk about ethics, perhaps, but rarely right and wrong.  I must admit, I heard the message of right and wrong as a child, but it did not have the same import then as it does now.  It seemed obvious to the point of being embarrassingly unnecessary.  Even though it is obvious, it is a point that must be made from generation to generation. These are words of good counsel for you while you are young.  And even for those of us who are no longer quite so young.



*From Silas Marner, by George Eliot, Signet Classics