Sylvanus Stall

Suggestions:—Objects to be used are a spool of thread, a piece of string or twine and a piece of rope.

After the sermon has been read, the thread and strings could be used to tie the hands and feet, and thus illustrate how impossible it is to break them when they are wound again and again around the hands and the feet, even though the thread be very fine. So with habits, seemingly insignificant.

Here is a very strong string. Perhaps a couple of boys, possibly four boys, might be able to break it. But here is a thinner string. Possibly I may be able to break this. Yes, I can, but with great difficulty. It takes all the strength I have to break it.

Now, here is some that is still thinner. It is about as thick as heavy thread. I can break it very easily.

But now, when I take this heavy rope and cut off a piece, if I unwind these different strands, I find that this rope is made by twisting smaller ropes together. If I untwist this smaller rope, which I have taken out of the larger rope, I find that it in like manner is also made of smaller ropes, or strings. If I take these smaller strings, and untwist them, I find that they are made of still smaller strings; if I take any of these smaller strings out of the rope, I can break them easily, but when I twist several of them together, I cannot break them.

I think that these smaller cords, out of which this rope is made, will very fittingly illustrate habits. It is a very dangerous thing to form bad habits. We should be very careful to form good ones, but bad ones are very dangerous. The boy who remains away from Sunday-school but once, thinks little of it. The boy who remains away from church, or stays at home from school, or disobeys his parents, or spends the evenings on the streets instead of in the house reading good books, or breaks the Sabbath, or does any one of many things, may think very little of it at the time; but do you know that when we go on repeating the same thing over and over again, the habit grows stronger and stronger until at last we are not able to break loose from that habit? There are men who think that they can stop smoking. They began with only an occasional cigarette or a cigar, until the habit grew upon them, and now possibly they think they are able to stop, but when they undertake to break off smoking, they find that it is a very difficult task, and very few smokers who undertake it succeed permanently. The old habit is likely to overcome them again and again.

So it is with swearing, and with telling falsehoods, and with being dishonest, and with drinking liquor, and everything else that men and boys often do. These habits at last become very strong, until they are not able to break loose from them.

Now, if you take one of these strong habits from which a man is not able to break loose, and untwist it, you will find that it was made strong by a repetition of small habits. Habits are made strong by doing the same thing over and over again. It is just the same as when I take this spool of thread and wrap it around the feet of a boy. I can wrap it around and around, and while it would be easy for him to break the thread if it was wrapped once or twice, or three or four times around his feet; yet after I have succeeded in placing it ten or twelve, or twenty-five or fifty times around his feet, he is not able to walk at all.

I could tie his hands by wrapping this small thread around and around, just a few times. At first it could be broken, but after a little it becomes so strong that he is not able to break it at all. So it is with habits. When we do the same things again and again, the habit becomes stronger and stronger day by day, and year by year, until at last Satan has the poor victim bound hand and foot, and he is absolutely helpless. No one is able to come and snap the cords, and set this poor helpless prisoner free, until God in His grace comes and liberates him from the evil habits with which he has bound himself, or with which he has permitted Satan to bind him.

It is very important that in the very beginning of life, we should all form the habit of doing those things which are right. The doing of the right may at first afford us but very little pleasure, yet we are to continue to do right, and after a while it will become pleasant for us to do right.

At first it may not be very pleasant for a boy to go to school. He prefers not to exert himself; not to put forth any mental effort. But after he becomes accustomed to going to school, and to putting forth mental effort, it becomes more and more natural to him, and finally he comes to love study. After he has completed his studies in the primary school, he goes to the intermediate, and to the grammar school, and high school, and possibly to college, and continues to be a student all his life.

So it is with going to church; those who begin when they are young and go regularly, Sunday after Sunday, become regular church attendants all their lives.

Habits are formed very much like the channel of a river. Gradually, year after year, the river wears its course deeper and deeper, until finally through the soft soil and the hard rock, through the pleasant meadow and the beautiful woodlands, it has worn out for itself a very deep channel in which it continues to flow to the ocean.

So the mind, by repeated action, marks out its course. Whether the mental effort or manual work be pleasant or difficult, we become so accustomed to it, that we go on day by day, and year by year doing the same thing.

The Bible gives very wise instruction to parents when it says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Prov. xxii: 6.) It has also been wisely said, "Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny."

Be careful, boys and girls, what you do, for by doing anything you are forming a habit. If you do wrong things you will form bad habits, but if you do right things you will form good habits, which are always the best.