Watching Point 478

478 — WATCH lest you go soft with error and become lenient and pleasant with it, and thereby lose your authority over it. Mrs. Eddy once declared that some of her students were as soft as mush! She also said, “When you rebuke sin, you cannot be nice to the sinner … The moment you are pleasant with or in error, thaxt moment you can do nothing with it. There must be authority.”

Once a coastguard gruffly ordered a man off the shore at sundown. Then in a pleasant voice he said, “But you can stay if you want to,” and was as friendly as could be. He was probably lonely; yet this happened during war, and he was supposed to be tough and stay tough with all who trespassed on the shore. God has called us to arrest all mental trespassers, and we are expected to be tough with them, since we are at war with all error. We lose our authority if, because of sentiment, laziness or unwatchfulness, we go soft and compromise with error of any sort.