p. 4 | The Power of Habit by R.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 30, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 29.

The Power of Habit

By R.

THE amphitheater was crowded with people. The noise of applause sounded forth, but died down again into the chill of horror. Before their astonished gaze a man had shown his wonderful power over a huge boa-constrictor by commanding it to coil about him, rear its awful head above him, and then slowly unwind again. When the critical moment came that the huge monster should release his hold, he refused to obey the order of his trainer. Suddenly he seemed conscious of his power. He tightened his huge coils about the man, and crushed every bone in his body, while horror sat upon the faces of that great audience. What did it mean?

For something like twenty years the man had trained the serpent to do his bidding. When he began, it was a small, almost insignificant reptile; but with years it had grown, until long ago it was more than a match for the man, had it known its power. Unconscious of its strength, it continued to obey, until at last, in this fateful moment, conscious of its supremacy, it crushed the one who for so long had played with its might.

What an example it is of habit! Man indulges in some temptation. He does not feel that he has been weakened by it. The change is so slight that he argues with himself that there is no danger, no untoward effect; but the temptation breeds a habit, and the habit becomes a part of the very life. At last, too late, he finds he is no longer his own master. The cruel, relentless, mighty tyrant holds lordship over him. He has been mastered by his vice.

The Word speaks of the deceitfulness of sin. Sin appears harmless. The act in the first temptation seems but a trifle; the way of the right and the way of the wrong seem to run practically parallel, but they diverge. That which seemed so insignificant increases in power and in enormity until consciousness of it comes too late to bring relief.

A friend of mine stood at Rincon by the Rio Grande River. A man said to him: “Do you know there is an engine buried in that river? The bridge trestle broke on one side, and tipped it into the river. It sank, and has never been recovered.”

“Didn’t they try to get it?”

“Yes, they put down long iron bars; and the last they knew, the engine was sixteen feet below the surface of the water.”

The engine had been mastered by the grime and ooze and mud of the river. It was a fine piece of mechanism. It had been built for a great work. Now it was useless, mastered by mud.

So is man as he yields to temptation, as he acquires habits of vice and sin. Slowly, surely, day by day, he sinks deeper and deeper into the ooze and mire and mud of his evil habit. Intended to bear the image of God, endowed with capacity and talents and power whose expansiveness knows no limits, he slowly dwarfs and dwindles in these faculties, but worst of all, becomes a part of the evil that conquers him.

All this teaches us the importance of never yielding to the first temptation, of never going in the path that diverges from the straight way. But it teaches more than this.

There are those who now find themselves under the power of the tyrant of sin. It is too late to talk to them of not starting in the evil way, for they have already traveled that way, perhaps for years, and find themselves ever mastered by sin. Each day they are conscious of the fact that it will find them weaker than yesterday, and to-morrow they will sink deeper than they did to-day. But there is help for such.

Paul likened this condition to that of a man who had chained to him a dead body. Its loathsome presence and its poisonous contact was horrible. He cries out in his agony, “Who shall deliver me from this dead body?” The answer comes certain, sure, triumphant: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

There is hardly a person in this world but needs emancipation from at least one habit. Some who sit in high and apparently holy places, and are counted in the higher citizenship of the country, find themselves unable to control their lives in every particular. But these, like those in the lowlier walks of society, can find absolute victory over sin and evil and the power of wrong habits through the gospel and power of Jesus Christ.

It is useless for us to argue the truth of this. The real evidence is to be found in making a fair and conscientious test. It is a sure and certain way out of the bondage of sin and vice.

Test it out; try it. R.