Faith & Spirit Quote by George A. Smith

For a 19th-century clergyman, this is a deliberately unsettling piece of theology: the soul is not a gated estate where good can be landscaped into permanence. Even when it is "purged and fenced" - cleaned by repentance, protected by discipline, ringed with community norms - evil still gets a pass at the door. The line denies the comforting fantasy that righteousness functions like security infrastructure.

Smith's intent is pastoral and disciplinary at once. Pastoral, because it relieves believers of the shameful surprise of temptation: if evil can enter even the most fortified person, then the presence of dark thoughts is not proof of total failure. Disciplinary, because it refuses complacency: purification is not graduation. The fencing matters, but it is not a guarantee; vigilance is the ongoing cost of faith.

The subtext is a quiet critique of moral pride, especially the kind that can thrive in tightly regulated religious communities. "However purged and fenced" reads like a side-eye at people who treat piety as a finished product, or who confuse outward order with inward safety. By pairing evil's access with God's - "as much freedom of entrance" - Smith also tightens the screws on human agency. If God does not force His way in, neither does evil always arrive as an obvious invasion; both can present themselves as invitations, impulses, rationalizations.

Contextually, in a Protestant revival culture obsessed with conversion and sanctification, the sentence works as an antidote to triumphal testimonies. It keeps salvation from becoming smug and turns holiness into a practice, not a trophy.