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Then what was the matter with them? Why did they act so? It was because they were under the influence of an exterior pressure. While there was a mind interpreting there the truth to them, they accepted it; but, the moment that influence ceased to be exerted upon them, they fell back into themselves. There was no root of that thing in them. At the first opportunity, all their under-nature worked again, just as it had worked before. That is the reason why so many persons listen, resolve, feebly try, and fail miserably. So that I sometimes think going to church hurts people. I know that going to church hurts some people. There are persons who go into church, and are stimulated and lifted up, and then they go out again, and fall back into their own old nature, and act just as if they had not been stimulated; and they go in again, and are stimulated and lifted up again, and then they go out, and fall back again. Their nature accommodates itself to the different circumstances, and they get used to them. Being lifted up and lowered, lifted up and lowered, the operative capacity of their sensibilities is lost out, and they get into sort of medium condition, in which they remain all the rest of their lives, no longer competent to carry out any generous impulse which they may have. A moral enamel comes over them; so that, though they feel somewhat, there is a disconnection between feeling and willing — between feeling as a moral emotion, and willing organized as a power of action — between transient feeling and the embodiment of feeling into character, which is the great end and drift of education in human life. This power of turning a momentary emotion to a permanent benefit they have lost; and when they have lost that, they have lost all nerve.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.

WEB: But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and said, 'Son, go work today in my vineyard.'