The Sin of Setting Temptation Before Others

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Accomplices in Sin," a sermon delivered Sunday Evening, 30 March 1873, at the Met Tab in London.

e may be partakers in other men's sins by tempting them to sin. This is a most hateful thing, and makes the man who practices it to become the devil's most devoted drudge, servant, and slave.

I have known such tempters of others,—old men who, from their youth up, had sinned in such a shameful way that their very looks were full of lechery. There was a leer about their eyes that was almost enough to destroy all chastity that came beneath their glance; and their speech was full of the double entendre, insinuations, and innuendoes, which were almost worse than open profanity. I have known one such walking mass of putrefaction defile a whole parish; and when I have seen a boy walking with such a demon incarnate, or sitting down with him in the public-house, I knew that the boy's character would be ruined if that vile doctor in devilry could only instruct him in the vices with which he is himself so shamefully familiar.

There are such fiends in London, and we could almost wish to have them all buried straight away, for they are Satan's servants spreading wickedness all around them. I do not suppose I am addressing one such dreadful creature; yet I know that some great sinners of that sort do come within these walls, and they will, of course, be very angry because of my allusion to them; yet I never knew a thief who was fond of a policemen, and I do not expect or wish to secure the approval of scoundrels whose evil character I am exposing.

If, sir, I have described thee, and thou wilt not repent of thy sin, I tell thee that the hottest place in hell is reserved for thee, for thou hast led young men to the alehouse, and taught them to drink the devil's drugs, and to repeat thy foul blasphemies, and to imitate thy scandalous lasciviousness. Yet, ere it is too late, I beseech thee to repent of thy sin, that it may be blotted out by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, which cleanseth from all sin; for, if not, "other men's sins" will cry out against thee for judgment at the bar of the Almighty.

I solemnly charge all of you, who have not committed this iniquity, never to do so; take care that you never say a word which might stain the innocence of a child's mind, and that you never let fall an expression which might, in any way, be the means of leading another person into sin, for it is an easy thing for us to become partakers of other men's sins by tempting them to commit iniquity.

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