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. When in a vacant hour we fall into reverie, and the images of the past come pouring out of the storehouse of memory at their own sweet will, how arbitrary appears the succession of our thoughts! With a rapidity greater than that of seven-leagued boots, the mind passes from country to country, and from century to century. This moment it is in Norway, the next in Australia, the next in Palestine, the next in Madagascar. But this apparent arbitrariness is not real. In reality thought is linked to thought, and for the wildest leaps and most arbitrary turns of the fancy there is in every case a sufficient reason. You are thinking of Norway; but that makes you recall a friend who is now in Australia, with whom you visited that picturesque country; and so your thought flies to Australia. Then, being in Australia, you think of the Southern Cross, because you have been reading a poem in which that constellation was described as the most remarkable feature of the southern hemisphere. Then the likeness of the name of the cross makes you think of the Cross of Christ, and so you pass over centuries and find yourself in Palestine; and the Cross of Christ makes you think of the sufferings of Christians, and your mind is in Madagascar, where the missionaries have recently been exposed to suffering. Thus, you see, beneath the phenomena apparently most arbitrary, there is law; and even for the most apparently unaccountable flights and leaps of the mind there is always a good reason. I. THE ORIGIN OF HABIT. Habit may be conceived to arise in this way. When, in the revolution of time — of the day, or the week, or the month, or the year, — the point comes round at which we have been thinking of anything, or have done anything, by the law of the association of ideas we think of it again, or do it again. For instance, when day dawns we awake. We get out of bed because we have done it at that time before. At a later hour we take breakfast, and go away to business, for the same reason; and so on through the day. When Sunday morning comes our thoughts turn to sacred things, and we make ready to go to the house of God, because we have always been accustomed to do that. The more frequently anything has been done, the stronger is habit, and frequency acts on habit through something else. Frequency gives ease and swiftness to the doing of anything. We do anything easily and swiftly which we have done often. Even things which seemed impossible can not only be done, but done with facility, if they have been done often. A celebrated character tells that in a month he learned to keep four balls up in the air and at the same time to read a book and understand it. Even tasks that caused pain may come to be done with pleasure, and things that were done at first only with groans and tears may at last become a source of triumph. It is not only the mind that is involved in habit. Even the body is subdued to its service. Do we not recognise the soldier by his gait, the student by his stoop, and the merchant by his bustle? And in the parts of the body that are invisible — the muscles and nerves — there is a still greater change due to habit. Hence the counsel of the philosopher, and I think it is a very profound counsel: "Make your nervous system your ally instead of your enemy in the battle of life." II. EXCESSIVE HABIT. Habit, even good habit, may be excessive. It tends to become hide-bound and tyrannical. There is a pharisaical sticking to opinions once formed, and to customs once adopted, which is the principal obstacle to human progress. Yet, on the whole, there is no possession so valuable as a few good habits, for this means that not only is the mind pledged and covenanted to good, but the muscles are supple, and even the very bones are bent to what is good. III. DESIRABLE HABITS. I should be inclined to say that the most desirable habit which any young person can seek to have is self-control; that is the power of getting yourself to do what you know you ought to do, and to avoid what you know you ought to avoid. At first this habit would be exceedingly difficult to acquire, but there is an enormous exhilaration when a man can do the thing he knows he ought to do. It is moral strength that gives self-respect, and it will very soon win the respect of others. The second habit I would like to name is the habit of concentration of mind. I mean the power of withdrawing your thoughts from other subjects, and fixing them for long at a time on the subject in hand. I am sure many of you know how difficult that habit is to acquire. If you attempt to think on any particular subject, immediately you will think of other things; but by perseverance your mind will become your servant, and then you are on the way to being a thinker, for it is only to people who begin to think in this way that the secret and joy of truth unfold themselves. I mention, as the third desirable habit, that of working when you are at work. I do not care what your work is, whether work of brain or hand, whether well-paid or ill-paid; but what I say is, do it as well as it can be done for its own sake, and for your own sake. Do it so that you can be proud of it. There is one other habit that I should like to mention that is very desirable, and that is prayer. Happy is that man who at some hour or hours every day — the time which he finds to be most suitable for himself — goes down on his knees before his Maker. I say happy is that man, for his heavenly Father who seeth in secret will reward him openly. IV. THE TYRANNY OF EVIL HABIT. Evil habits may be acquired through simply neglecting to acquire good ones. Like weeds, they grow up wherever the field is uncultivated and the good seed is not sown. For example, the man who does not work becomes a dissipated loafer. The young man who does not keep up the habit of going to church loses spiritual instinct — the instinct for worship, for fellowship, for religious work, and becomes a prey to sloth on the Sabbath. 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 which 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. This truth is terribly expressed in our text: "Can the Ethiopian," etc. I suppose we all have contracted evil habits of some kind, and therefore for all of us it is an important question, Can these be unlearned and undone? V. HOW TO BREAK BAD HABITS. Moralists give rules for undoing evil habits. Here are some of them. 1. "Launch yourself on the new course with as strong an initiative as possible." I suppose he means, do not try to taper your evil habit off, but break it off at once. Give it no quarter; and pledge yourself in some way; make some public profession. 2. "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is rooted in your life." 3. "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of habits you aspire to gain." 4. "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day." This writer strongly recommends that every one who seeks moral strength should every day do something he does not want to do, just to prove to himself he has the power of doing it. He would not mind very much whether it was an important thing or not, but he would say, "Every day do something deliberately that you do not want to do, just that you may get power over yourself — the power of getting yourself to do anything you want." 5. I do not disparage rules like these. We have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, but the other half of that maxim is equally true, "It is God that worketh in you both to win and to do His good pleasure." (James Stalker, D. D.) 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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