JEREMIAH xiii. 23 69
purity-habit, the truth-habit, the habits of faith, and hope, and love. Our receptive and expansive nature waits ready to incorporate all such pieties and virtues in its fibre and spontaneous movement. It is specially at the early stage that we have to bend our wills and drill our natural proclivities and watch ourselves with sentinel alertness. Time after time it is much " against the grain " to keep up the good custom ; but " the grain " will soon " grow to " the repeated demand, like the muscles of a child-acrobat, or the branches of a Japanese dwarf-tree. Every time we repeat the exercise in self-mastery or honour or devotion, by the law of vis inertiae in nature the power to keep on in the good way increases.1
IV.
Change of Habit.
Has Jeremiah uttered the whole truth ? Can nothing be done if years of habit have bent our natures into one shape, and that shape is deformed ? Are we helpless if character has already been made crooked and perverse by the continual warping of evil habit ? Is there no hope that the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots ?
1. It is next to impossible for a man who has arrived at mature age, with evil habits formed in early years, to turn his course ; no consideration that you can put before him has sufficient power to break down the practice. He is as convinced as you can be of the mischief of the course he is pursuing ; no one laments it more bitterly, and at times feels it more keenly, and no one is more ready to form resolutions to amend. But the language of the prophet is expressive of the case, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? " There is an irresistible force in the cravings of that long-indulged temper or appetite, which the man, with all his good intentions, has not the energy to resist. There has been no inward change, no power at work beyond the mere human resolution ; and the consequence is that the latter state often becomes worse than the first. Those who witness the process become more and more convinced that
1 R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 129.
7o HABIT
there never will be any material change in that man ; and they are ready to adopt language fully as expressive as that of the text — that it is as easy for the leopard to change his spots as it is for that man, with all his convictions and all his efforts, to continue in well-doing.
2. But that which is impossible with men is possible with God. We cannot change the Ethiopian's skin or the leopard's spots ; but God can. He who made the machinery of the mind can, when it is broken, fashion it anew, and restore it to its functions. It is possible to convert the soul which has long been accustomed to do evil ; but such conversion is as much the work of God as the creation of the soul was at the beginning.
The heart which no assaults could storm yields to the voice of love and mercy ; the will which offered an obstinate resistance to the exhortation to turn and repent is at length subdued : the offer of a free pardon for all that is past overcomes the resistance. Keligion, then, in a changed heart becomes the main business of life. It begins to pervade the every-day occupations. The heart is filled with the knowledge and love of God ; and the new affections expel the old from the long-usurped throne. A change comes over the perceptive faculties. Beauty and consistency are now discerned in God's plan of redemption. New fields of interest and occupation open out : a new world has been discovered, in which are seen things of greater moment than the politics or controversies of the day. And the wonder to a soul so enlightened is, how it could have been so exclusively set upon the things of earth, when the things that are spiritual were so close at hand, and, now that they are seen, afford such scope for the exercise of the highest faculties of the soul. It is thus, if we may so speak, that the Ethiopian does change his skin, and the leopard his spots ; for God Himself undertakes to do that which with man is declared to be impossible.
^| When I lay in darkness and blind night, when I was tossed hither and thither by the billows of the world, and wandered about with an uncertain and fluctuating course, according to my habits at that time I considered it as something difficult and hard that anyone could be born again, lay aside what he was before, and although his corporeal nature remained the same, could become in soul and disposition another man. " How," said I,
JEREMIAH xiii. 23 71
" can there be so great a transformation — that a man should all at once lay aside what is either innate from his very organization, or through habit has become a second nature ? How should a man learn frugality who has been accustomed to luxuries ? How should he who has been clothed in gold and purple condescend to simple attire ? Intemperance must always, as heretofore, invite him with tenacious allurements, pride puff him up, anger influence him, ambition allure him, pleasure captivate him — thus I have often said to myself, For as I was entangled in many errors of my former life, and did not believe that I could be freed from them ; so I complied with the vices that cleaved to me, and despairing of amendment, submitted to my evil inclinations, as if they belonged to my nature. But after the stain of my former life had been taken away by the aid of regenerating water, a pure and serene light was poured into the reconciled heart ; when, through the Spirit received from heaven, the second birth trans- formed me into a new man — things formerly doubtful were confirmed in a wonderful manner — what before was closed, became open, and dark things were illuminated ; power was given to perform what before seemed difficult, and what was thought impossible became possible." 1