The Chains of Habit.

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

HE Chains of habit" (from Latin habere, to have),

“ཀ"

i. e., "the chains of having." Having what? In civilized lands no person of sense speaks of there being such things as the chains of honesty, the chains of truth, the chains of purity, the chains of honor, the chains of righteousness; but they do speak of the chains of dishonesty, of falsehood, of vice, of dishonor, of sin. Why? Because each recognizes that the first are in strict accord with the best interests and the highest development of men, and so are not chains but are our natural belongings, and that the latter only debase and ruin man. From whatever source this knowledge may have come to them, whether by experience, or tradition, or revelation, they hold that to have the first of those things is to be free, and to have the last is to be a slave, and they have embodied that thought into both their language and their law.

We were designed for freedom. Slavery of the body was felt to be and is now recognized by all civilized nations as an abhorrent thing, not to be tolerated, but to be abolished. They will yet hold that slavery of mind is worse. The laws that govern the physical world are no more wise and immutable than are those governing the mental. In accord with the first the body was designed to take in foods, not poisons. Yet a man may so accustom his body to the use of the deadly and violent poisons of alcohol, of tobacco, of opium, etc., as to become in soul and body their most abject slave, and be led to commit the most atrocious crimes while under their influence,

or in order to obtain them. In such case, their fellows speak of them as being diseased, and the victims of the alcohol, tobacco, or opium habit, etc. First, they had the drink, or the tobacco, or the opium, or the lust of pleasure or of gold, and could have left them. Now the drink, the tobacco, the opium, the lust, the gold, have them and they are eternal slaves, and who shall deliver from that bondage?

So likewise the mind was designed for the knowledge of truth, and not error. Yet a man may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave, and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or to propagate it. The dungeon, the rack, the gibbet, and the stake, bear witness to this in earlier times, and the dynamite bomb of the anarchists in these modern days. But does truth, any more than virtue, need violence to propagate it, and make it flourish? Does not the use of violence disprove the claim to be either virtue or truth? A sober man does not commit the awful deeds that dehumanize the drunkard, nor will the man of truth persecute, torture, and kill his fellow men, to establish the truth. Truth never needs that.

How do men come to be drunkards, or slaves to the vices? Sometimes by inheritance-their parents before them being such; by dalliance with them; sometimes by education by another; more generally by forming the habit in childhood and youth, by sipping cider, wine, beer, etc. Acts repeated make habits. No man ever became a drunkard by one drink. It was keeping at it that at last made him a slave. And then how abject he is. Listen, while an ex-slave, John B. Gough, tells of it. "Oh, it is pitiful, it is pitiful-the appetite for intoxicating liquors when it becomes a master passion! one of the most fearful that man was ever subject to! And not only is it amongst the low, as we call them, and the illiterate; not only amongst those whose first words they heard were words of blasphemy, whose first words they uttered were words of cursing; but it also holds the man a slave who stands in front of the counter and pleads for drink: 'Give me drink. I will

give you my hard earnings for it. I will give you more than that. I married a wife, and promised to love and cherish her and protect her-ah! ah! and I have driven her out to work for me, and I have stolen her wages and I have brought them to you-give me drink, and I will give you them! More yet; I have snatched the bit of bread from the white lips of my famished child-I will give you that if you will give me drink! More yet; I will give you my health! More yet; I will give you my manliness! More yet; I will give you my hopes of heavenbody and soul! I will barter jewels worth all the kingdoms of the earth-for "what will a man give in exchange for his soul"-all these for a dram! Give it to me!"" Young man, water never made a man such a slave as that. No drink nor food in nature ever wrought such evil to men. It is only the poisons that work such havoc; and it will yet come to pass that the community or state that licenses the making of such slaves of men by the drink traffic will be deemed to be in league with hell.

How do men become slaves of error? How do men become thieves, liars, lecherous beasts, and men of violence and blood? By the teachings of parents or others, it may be-more generally, however, by little acts of dishonesty; by slight deviations from truth; by hearing or telling stories they would blush to their finger-tips to have their mother, sister, or a virtuous maiden hear; by little acts of cruelty and robbery repeated till the heart is hardened and conscience is stifled, and the brain inhabited by unholy, cruel, and foul things, and the nature finally sets wholly to evil.

Acts form habits; habits form character (from the Greek charassein, to cut furrows, to engrave); and character tends constantly and swiftly to fixedness. And when the plastic mind of the child and youth has hardened into the man of evil, what can change him? When he is old he will not depart from the way in which he was trained when a child; unless it be that some miracle of grace somewhere arrest him, and the Infinite One change the "heart of stone" again to one "of

flesh." But will he? and where? and when? We see here how quickly the folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the man. When each of us shall enter upon the next state of our being, shall we find the law of that life to be what the Scriptures forewarn us-to wit," he that is holy shall be holy yet more-and he that is filthy shall be filthy yet more "? If so, how fearful to enter it in chains to evil habits of whatever name or kind!