Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. 1. To form a vicious habit is one of the easiest processes in nature. Man comes into a world where sin is, in many of its various forms, originally pleasant, and where evil propensities may be gratified at small expense. Nothing is required but to leave man to what is called the state of nature, to make him the slave of habitual sensuality. But even after the mind is, in some degree, fortified by education, and reason has acquired a degree of force, the ease with which a bad habit can be acquired is not less to be lamented. Vice gains its power by insinuation. It winds gently round the soul, without being felt, till its twines become so numerous, that the sinner, like the wretched Laocoon, writhes in vain to extricate himself, and his faculties are crushed at length in the folds of the serpent. Vice is prolific. It is no solitary invader. Admit one of its train, and it immediately introduces, with an irresistible air of insinuation, the multitude of its fellows, who promise you liberty, but whose service is corruption, and whose wages is death. 2. The effects of sinful indulgence, which make its relinquishment so difficult, are, that it perverts the moral discernment, benumbs the sensibility of conscience, destroys the sentiment of shame, and separates the sinner from the means and opportunities of conversion. The moral discernment is perverted. As the taste can be reconciled to the most nauseous and unpleasant impressions, the eye familiarised to a deformed object, the ear, to the most grating and discordant noises, and the feeling, to the most rough and irritating garment, so the moral taste becomes insensible to the loathsomeness of vice. Another effect of habitual transgression is, to banish the sentiment of shame. It is the tendency of habit to make a man regardless of observation, and at length of censure. He soon imagines that others see nothing offensive in what no longer offends himself. Besides, a vicious man easily gathers round him a circle of his own. It is the society of numbers which gives hardihood to iniquity, when the sophistry of the united ingenuity of others comes in aid of our own, and when, in the presence of the shameless and unblushing, the young offender is ashamed to blush. The last effect of vicious habits, by which the reformation of the sinner is rendered almost desperate, is, to separate him from the means of grace. He, who indulges himself in any passion, lust, or custom which openly or secretly offends against the laws of God or man, will find an insuperable reluctance to those places, persons, or principles by which he is necessarily condemned. One means of recovery yet remains, the reproof and example of the good. But who will long bear the presence of another, whose very looks reprove him, whose words harrow up his conscience, and whose whole life is a severe, though silent, admonition? 3. Do you ask when education should commence? Believe me, it has begun. It began with the first idea they received — the insensible education of circumstances and example. While you are waiting for their understandings to gain strength, vice, folly, and pleasure have not waited your dilatory motions. While you are looking out for masters and mistresses, the young immortals are under the tuition of innumerable instructors. Passion has been exciting, and idleness relaxing them, appetite tempting, and pleasure rewarding them, and example, example has long since entered them into her motley school. Already have they learned much, which will never be forgotten: the alphabet of vice is easily remembered. Is it not time to examine, whether there be not in you some vicious habit, which, notwithstanding your caution, frequently presents itself to their greedy observation, thus recommended by all the weight of parental authority? But, though the doctrine of the early operation of habit be full of admonitions, it presents consequences, also, full of consolation and pleasure. God hath set the evil and the good, one over against the other; and all His general laws are adapted to produce effects ultimately beneficial. If the love of sensual pleasure become inveterate by indulgence, the pure love of truth and goodness, also, may, by early instillation and careful example, become so natural and constant, that a violation of integrity, and offence against gratitude, a breach of purity or of reverence toward God, may prove as painful as a wound. (J. S. Buckminster.) Parallel Verses KJV: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. |
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