The Low Level of Moral Enthusiasm

              By A. W. Tozer
 

              How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?. . .
                                                                           -  - Hebrews 2:3

                  In only one field of human interest do we Americans
              seem slow and apathetic: that is the field of personal
              religion.

                  Church people habitually approach the matter of their
              personal relation to God in a dull, halfhearted way
              which is altogether out of keeping with their general
              temperament  and wholly inconsistent with  the
              importance of the subject.

                  Dante, on his imaginary journey through hell, came
              upon a group of lost souls who sighed and moaned con-
              tinually as they whirled about aimlessly in the dusky air.
              Virgil,  his  guide,  explained  that  these  were  the
              "wretched people," the "nearly soulless," who while
              they lived on earth had not moral energy enough to be
              either good or evil. They had earned neither praise nor
              blame, and with them and sharing in their punishment
              were those angels who would take sides neither with
              God nor Satan.

                  The writer pictured the doom of all of the weak and
              irresolute crew to be suspended forever between a hell
              that despised them and a heaven that would not receive
              their defiled presence. Not even their names were to be
              mentioned again in heaven or earth or hell.

                  Was Dante saying in his own way what our Lord had
              said long before to the church of Laodicea: "I know you
              well -- you are neither hot nor cold; I wish you were
              one or the other! But since you are merely lukewarm,
              I will spit you out of my mouth!"

                  The low level of moral enthusiasm among us may have
              a significance far deeper than we are willing to believe!

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              Yours in Christ,
              Paul N. F.