p. 10 | CLEANLINESS OF HABIT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 23.

CLEANLINESS OF HABIT.

ALL life issues in habits. They are in constant process of formation. If left to themselves, they inevitably bring one into bondage. If directed, regulated, mastered by Christian self-discipline, they constitute life’s glory and strength. Gentle speech, courteous manners, pure thought, refined taste, cultured appetites, regulated tempers, and all spiritual graces, may become habits, yea, and in the child of God must become habitual and thus abiding. To cultivate or permit unchaste thought or evil appetite, is to transform one’s own being into a prison-house, and to bequeath to one’s self a perdition of measureless wo.

The body, created as the temple of the Holy Ghost, must never be surrendered to the imperious power of narcotics. The tobacco habit, the drink habit, and similar enthralments, are beneath the dignity of an immortal spirit, yea, are beneath even the worthiness of a healthy animal. The brute creation never comes under the sway of such unnatural habits. Only the perversion of the soul results in such physical and moral degradation. A true gentleman would not usher a refined lady into a smoking-room. She would deem such treatment an insult. But are not many professed Christians less courteous to the Holy Spirit? They invite His incoming to bodies saturated with offensive narcotics, and seem not to know why He refuses to enter and abide.

Thought also becomes habitual. What tyranny can surpass that of unholy desires and imaginations? What joy equals that of the pure in heart? Habits are formed chiefly in early life. They determine character and destiny. We may make them what we will,—friends, helpers, safeguards, blessings eternal. We acquire them, they ultimately hold us.—N. Y. Observer.