and vile, he will poison it. Nor is it possible for any one to occupy
a neutral or indifferent position. In some form or other he _must_
affect others. Were he to banish himself to a distant island, or even
enter the gates of death, he still exercises a positive influence, for
he is _a loss_ to his brothers; the loss of that most blessed gift of
God, even that of a living man to living men--of a being who ought to
have loved and to have been beloved. "No man liveth to himself, or
dieth to himself;"--he must in some form, for their good or evil,
their gladness or sadness, influence others.

The influence of individual character extends from one generation to
another. The world is moulded by it. Does not history turn on the
influence exercised by the first and second Adam?

No one questions the reality of the influence of a bad character upon
others. The existence of evil persons here or elsewhere, and their
power to infect other persons through the foul malaria of the evil
in which they live, may be unaccountably mysterious when seen in the
light of God's infinite love; but they are, nevertheless, the most
certain facts within the field of our own observation and experience.

This malign influence is of every degree--from the undesigned yet real
injury which is done to others by the merely slothful or indifferent
man, who never, as he says, "intended to injure any one," and "never
thought" he was doing so, but who, nevertheless, injures many a cause,
and freezes and discourages many a heart, by his selfishness in _not_
thinking and _not_ doing;--up to the injury which is done by the cool,
designing villain, who, in his plots and plans to sacrifice others to
himself, has reached the utmost limit which distinguishes the bad man
from the demon.