If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Mark 9:47
Words: Mary W. Hale, in her Poems (Boston, Massachusetts: William D. Ticknor, 1840), pages 213–14.
Music: Horsley William Horsley, 1844 (🔊 pdf nwc).
If you know where to get a good picture of Hale (head & shoulders, at least 200×300 pixels),
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.
Whatever dims thy sense of truth
Or stains thy purity,
Though light as breath of summer air,
Count it as sin to thee.
Let not the world thy God dethrone
Or from His smile divide;
And count compared with heavenly wealth,
As dross all things beside.
Dim not the crystal of thy soul
By sin’s destroying breath:
There lurks beneath the siren smile
Dark treachery and death.
Preserve the tablet of thy thoughts
From every blemish free,
For our Redeemer’s lowly faith
Its temple makes with thee.
And pray of God, that grace be given
To tread time’s narrow way:
How dark soever it may seem,
It leads to cloudless day.