Matthew 12:43-45 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walks through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.… As wealth increases, as we multiply men-servants and maid-servants in our houses, as life becomes less primitive and more artificial, there come to be found a large number of persons, both men and women, who have little or nothing to do, unless they seek or make an occupation for themselves. It is out of such a condition of things that there is sure to arise, sooner or later, every imaginable evil that can afflict society or ruin the individual soul. Given the growth of wealth, luxury and indolence, and straightway you have prepared a nest in which a whole brood of vices will soon and swiftly be hatched. When one home is clouded or shattered by the shame of some wretched intrigue, and another stung and wounded by the cruelty of some causeless calumny, and a third dishonoured and disbanded perhaps by some foolish and criminal extravagance, have we ever paused to consider amid what idleness, what aimlessness, amid what vapid seeking for a fresh excitement in the dead dull level of an unemployed and uninterested life, these manifold forms of evil were conceived and initiated? Ah! if we could trace back some crime or baseness to its incipient beginning, how often should we find it true that, into the life, "empty, swept and garnished," there had entered, just because it was so empty, its hands so idle and unemployed, its heart so uninterested and indifferent, a whole legion of devils to drag it down to hell. (Bishop H. C. Potter.) Parallel Verses KJV: When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. |
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