Thousands can sympathize with David when he cried, "My sins have taken such hold upon me that I am not able to look up; my heart faileth me."

Like the d.a.m.ned spot of blood on Lady Macbeth's hand, these foul spots on the imagination will not out. What a penalty nature exacts for physical sins. The G.o.ds are just, and "of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us."

Plato wrote over his door, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." The greatest value of the study of the cla.s.sics and mathematics comes from the habits of accurate and concise thought which it induces.

The habit-forming portion of life is the dangerous period, and we need the discipline of close application to hold us outside of our studies.

Washington at thirteen wrote one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all habits.

Franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character building. No doubt the n.o.ble characters of these two men, almost superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early care and earnest striving towards perfection.

Fielding, describing a game of cards between Jonathan Wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these ill.u.s.trious persons, that Mr.

Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."

"Habit," says Montaigne, "is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress.

She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the aid of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance against which we have no more the courage nor the power so much as to lift up our eyes." It led a New York man actually to cut off his hand with a cleaver under a test of what he would resort to, to get a gla.s.s of whiskey. It has led thousands of nature's n.o.blemen to drunkards' and libertines' graves.

Gough's life is a startling ill.u.s.tration of the power of habit, and of the ability of one apparently a hopeless slave to break his fetters and walk a free man in the sunlight of heaven. He came to America when nine years old. Possessed of great powers of song, of mimicry, and of acting, and exceedingly social in his tastes, a thousand temptations

"Widened and strewed with flowers the way Down to eternal ruin."

"I would give this right hand to redeem those terrible seven years of dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting pa.s.sion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the chains of b.e.s.t.i.a.l habits.

In the laboratory of Faraday a workman one day knocked into a jar of acid a silver cup; it disappeared, was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. The question came up whether it could ever be found.

The great chemist came in and put certain chemicals into the jar, and every particle of the silver was precipitated to the bottom. The ma.s.s was then sent to a silversmith, and the cup restored. So a precious youth who has fallen into the sink of iniquity, lost, dissolved in sin, can only be restored by the Great Chemist.

What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. "Out of a church of twenty-seven hundred members, I have never had to exclude a single one who was received while a child," said Spurgeon.

It is the earliest sin that exercises the most influence for evil.

Benedict Arnold was the only general in the Revolution that disgraced his country. He had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a courage equal to any emergency. But Arnold _did not start right_.

Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness.

He delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their sufferings. He scattered pieces of gla.s.s and sharp tacks on the floor of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys.

Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, the soldiers hated him, and the officers dared not trust him.

Let no man trust the first false step Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, Whose steep descent in last perdition ends.

YOUNG

Years ago there was a district lying near Westminster Abbey, London, called the "Devil's Acre,"--a school for vicious habits, where depravity was universal; where professional beggars were fitted with all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives, to move the compa.s.sion of street-giving benevolence; where young pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country to Botany Bay.

Victor Hugo describes a strange a.s.sociation of men in the seventeenth century who bought children and distorted and made monstrosities of them to amuse the n.o.bility with; and in cultured Boston there is an a.s.sociation of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands of "places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls.

But we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we scarcely recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each impure thought has chiseled its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure, and the gla.s.sy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character.

The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first lights the shavings of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man until it has long circulated through his system. Murder, adultery, theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in thought again and again.

"Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond pin on a pane of gla.s.s in the window of a hotel. "Why not?" inquired the boy. "Because you can't rub it out." Yet the gla.s.s might have been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal.

"In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes, "there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, that, and nothing else, shall he reap. The only thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and n.o.body else, will have to reap them."

We scatter seeds with careless hand, And dream we ne'er shall see them more; But for a thousand years Their fruit appears, In weeds that mar the land.

JOHN KEBLE.

Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disciples away from him.

"That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue--an arduous ascent and unknown to most men."

"When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, "that he is 'studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk, that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted, sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious and admiring friends, 'He is falling a victim to his own diligence!'

Most lame and impotent conclusion! He is sapping the very source of life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. Young man, beware of his example! 'Keep thyself pure;' observe the laws of your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing industry will never rob you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life; for industry and health are companions, and long life is the heritage of diligence."

"How shall I a habit break?"

As you did that habit make.

As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse.

Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist.

Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand.

As we builded, stone by stone, We must toil, unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown.

But remember, as we try, Lighter every test goes by; Wading in, the stream grows deep Toward the centre's downward sweep; Backward turn, each step ash.o.r.e Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste Leveling what we raised in haste; Doing what must be undone, Ere content or love be won!

First across the gulf we cast Kite-borne threads till lines are pa.s.sed, And habit builds the bridge at last.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

CHAPTER VIII.

SELF-HELP.

I learned that no man in G.o.d's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.--PESTALOZZI.

What I am I have made myself.--HUMPHRY DAVY.

Be sure, my son, and remember that the best men always make themselves.--PATRICK HENRY.

Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

BYRON.

G.o.d gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest.--J. G. HOLLAND.

Never forget that others will depend upon you, and that you cannot depend upon them.--DUMAS, FILS.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven.--SHAKESPEARE.

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to obtain a living.--WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself.--GIBBON.

What the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is in others.--CONFUCIUS.