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I. DEFINE THE CLASSES OF THOUGHT WHICH MAY BE REGARDED AS EVIL.

1. Vain thoughts. These are not of a directly noxious quality; yet, light, empty, trifling, and insignificant, they form a most fearful waste of the noble faculty of thought.

2. Thoughts of a directly irreligious tendency. Impious and unworthy conceptions of God, sceptical thoughts in relation to various parts of revealed religion nourished as a subterfuge for sin, rebellious thoughts formed in the hardness of our hearts against the allotments of His providence, etc.

3. Intensely selfish and worldly thoughts.

4. Thoughts of deliberate wickedness.

II. INDICATE THE SINFULNESS OF EVIL THOUGHTS.

1. They have the stamp of guilt affixed to them by the Divine law.

2. They lead to the expressions of evil actions.

3. They defraud us of the supreme end of thought.

III. ENFORCE THE NECESSITY OF RESISTANCE OF EVIL, THOUGHTS. HOW necessary such resistance when we consider the advantages accruing, e.g., the influence —

1. Upon our personal character.

2. Upon society.

3. Upon a review of life in leaving it and during eternity.

(James Foster, B. A.)

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KJV: Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?

WEB: Don't you understand that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the belly, and then out of the body?