We all know that anything once done becomes easier to do again. That
is true about both good and bad actions, but 'ill weeds grow apace,'
and it is infinitely easier to form a bad habit than a good one. The
young shoot is green and flexible at first, but it soon becomes woody
and grows high and strikes deep. We can all verify the statement of
our text by recalling the tremors of conscience, the self-disgust, the
dread of discovery which accompanied the first commission of some evil
deed, and the silence of undisturbed, almost unconscious facility,
that accompanied later repetitions of it. Sins of sense and animal
passion afford the most conspicuous instances of this, but it is by no
means confined to these. We have but to look steadily at our own lives
to be aware of the working of this solemn law in them, however clear
we may be of the grosser forms of evil deeds. For us all it is true
that custom presses on us 'with a weight, heavy as frost and deep
almost as life,' and that it is as hard for the Ethiopian to change
his skin or the leopard his spots as for those who 'are accustomed to
do evil' to 'do good.'
But experience teaches not only that evil deeds quickly consolidate
into evil habits, but that as the habit grips us faster, the poor
pleasure for the sake of which the acts are done diminishes. The zest
which partially concealed the bitter taste of the once eagerly
swallowed morsel is all but gone, but the morsel is still sought and
swallowed. Impulses wax as motives wane, the victim is like an ox
tempted on the road to the slaughter-house at first by succulent
fodder held before it, and at last driven into it by pricking goads
and heavy blows. Many a man is so completely wrapped in the net which
his own evil deeds have made for him, that he commits the sin once
more, not because he finds any pleasure in it, but for no better
reason than that he has already committed it often, and the habit is
his master.
There are many forms of evil which compel us to repeat them for other
reasons than the force of habit. For instance, a fraudulent
book-keeper has to go on making false entries in his employer's books
in order to hide his peculations. Whoever steps on to the steeply
sloping road to which self-pleasing invites us, soon finds that he is
on an inclined plane well greased, and that compulsion is on him to go
on, though he may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly aware
of what the end must be. Let no man say, 'I will do this doubtful
thing once only, and never again.' Sin is like an octopus, and if the
loathly thing gets the tip of one slender filament round a man, it
will envelop him altogether and drag him down to the cruel beak.
Let us then remember how swiftly deeds become habits, and how the
fetters, which were silken at first, rapidly are exchanged for iron
chains, and how the craving increases as fast as the pleasure from
gratifying it diminishes. Let us remember that there are many kinds of
evil which seem to force their own repetition, in order to escape
their consequences and to hide the sin. Let us remember that no man
can venture to say, 'This once only will I do this thing.' Let us
remember that acts become habits with dreadful swiftness, and let us
beware that we do not forge chains of darkness for ourselves out of
our own godless deeds.