II.
The Power of Habit.
1. Habit gains power by every repetition of an act. Human gifts and faculties have a power of expansion. They increase and multiply. For example, money attracts money, learning increases learning, joy brings joy. It is so with goodness : good habits lead us to acquire still better habits, while the poor fellow who has once earned a bad name, and who is shut out from the helps and privileges that ordinary men enjoy, will generally cultivate his evil propensities and strengthen only such habits as are bad.
Our several acts in life seem to be of little consequence in themselves, but they have all a terrible significance, for habit is just made up of little acts, and each one helps, and each one tells, and each succeeding act tells more and more. We know that if a stone is dropped from a height it falls so many feet — sixteen feet during the first second. The next second it does not fall the same number of feet, but has acquired increased speed, and
1 J. Stalker. 2 Samuel Smiles, Character (ed. 1874), 192.
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falls four times the distance it did during the previous second, and each succeeding second the speed is greater and swifter. The earth has a stronger gravitating power over it, draws it more quickly down, and it acquires momentum and gathers increasing rapidity as it falls. That is precisely the case with sin. It moves slowly at the start ; but when it has begun, it increases in force and speed and dashes down the steep incline with resistless might.
"[[ In South Africa there is a curious plant known as a hook- thorn or grapple-plant, said to bear some resemblance to the cuttle-fish. The large flowers are of a lovely purple hue and spread themselves over the ground or hang in masses from the trees and shrubs. The long branches have sharp, barbed thorns, set in pairs throughout their length. When the petals fall off and the seed-vessels are developed and fully ripe, the two sides separate widely from each other and form an array of sharp- curved hooks. Woe to the traveller who ventures near at such a time ! In one of the Kaffir wars with England, the English soldiers suffered terribly from this plant. While the Kaffir, un- clothed and oily, escaped harm, the European was certain to be made and held a prisoner. If one hooked thorn caught a coat- sleeve the first movement at escape would bend the long slender branches and hook after hook would fix its point into the clothing. Struggling only multiplied the number of thorned enemies, and there was no way of escape except to stand still, cut off the clinging seed-vessels, and remove them one by one. Many a luckless soldier was run to death by a Kaffir's spear while thus trying to free himself. This is a vivid illustration of the dangerous power of evil habit, which through custom and long self-indulgence hooks into a man's very heart and holds him against his reason and against his will a prisoner even to his death.1
2. The power of habit steadily grows till it dominates the will. We cannot explain this phenomenon ; the fact we know, and it is of vast importance that we should know it. A repetition of the same thoughts and actions is so apt to ensure their continuance that it is one of the most difficult things in the world to check this habitual operation of the mind, and give it a different direction from that in which it has been wont to flow. Even habits which relate to matters of indifference become inveterate, and are with great difficulty modified and overcome. Especially are they
1 L. A. Banks, The Sinner and his Friends, 242,
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obstinate when they are under the control of some prevailing disposition, and fall in with the natural inclination of the mind.
Even in the most indifferent matter, the most ordinary postures, movements, and actions, when once people have got into a way of practising them, it seems next to impossible to leave them off. We come to do things without being aware that we do them : and when our attention is drawn to them, we feel as if we could not leave them off. Such is the power of habit or custom, put into our minds and bodies by Almighty God that we might be tried whether we will make a good or a bad use of it. How fearful to think what a turn it too often takes ! how exceedingly horrible to be aware of shameful, corrupting, deadly sins, in a man's own self or his neighbour, having come to be so habitual as to be committed without the sinner being aware of it ; or, if he is aware, with the feeling that he cannot help it.
Tf The tyranny of evil habit is proverbial. The moralists compare it to a thread at the beginning, but as thread is twisted with thread, it becomes like a cable which can turn a ship. Or they compare it to a tree, which to begin with is only a twig that you can bend any way, but when the tree is fully grown, who can bend it ? And apart altogether from such illustrations, it is appalling how little even the most strong and obvious motives can turn aside the course of habit.1