Handicapping One's Self.
Houdini is a wonderful man. He seems to be able to wriggle out of any pair of handcuffs that ever were snapped on, to make his way out of any prison however stout the doors, and to force an exit from any box into which he may be nailed or chained or bolted.
One of his latest exploits was the following: After appropriate advertisements—for Houdini is not in this business for the fun of it—the wizard stood one day on Harvard Bridge, connecting Boston and Cambridge, while a tremendous crowd watched him. He placed his hands behind his back and allowed them to be handcuffed together. An iron yoke was set around his neck and a chain was run from it to the handcuffs, the chain also being fastened to clasps which encircled his arms just below the shoulder. Thus weighted with sixteen pounds of iron and steel, Houdini leaped from the bridge into the swift current of Charles River, twenty-six feet below.
In less than a minute the remarkable man thrust his hand above the green water and held aloft the opened handcuffs! Houdini says it was forty seconds, and declares that he can time himself closer than any split-second watch. Whatever the time, it was a marvelous feat.
I should like to be able to do that—and then not do it! On the river of life I have seen the thing done many a time—at least the first part of it, the putting on the handcuffs. The other part, the twisting out of the handcuffs while wrestling with the stream, I have seen very seldom indeed.
Handcuffed? How?
Why, by bad habits, by drinking, by gambling, by licentiousness, by sloth, by carelessness, by conceit, by lying, by dishonesty, by infidelity. Each of these is a pair of handcuffs with which I have seen many a young fellow allow his hands to be locked behind his back while he leaped into the river of life. Then I have seen him flounder a while. Then I have heard him raise one despairing cry to heaven. Then he has sunk, to rise no more.
Oh, leave that sort of thing to Houdini and the Charles River! Or, if you must try it, try Houdini's kind of handcuffs. You will be safer with those than with any of the handcuffs I have named.
Upside Down.
There is a topsy-turvy boy in Durham, England, or was, some years ago. He was five years old, and performed all his school operations backward and upside down. He wrote from right to left. He made all his letters and figures upside down and backward at that. His u's were n's and his m's were w's. He got the same result in words out of these queer combinations as the other children obtained, but his teacher must have felt like Alice in the Looking-glass.
I had the same experience when I began to teach in a country school in Ohio. One of my pupils, a boy about ten years old, wrote all his combinations of figures backward. 42 he wrote 24, and 100 became 001. All his arithmetical processes were similarly reversed, so that he came out with the correct answer. My predecessor had failed to break him of the habit, and it was with great difficulty that I succeeded in doing so.
I suspect, indeed, that this topsy-turvy way of looking at things is commoner than we realize. Through some inherited bent or some misfortune of surroundings or of education, many of us invert our mental and spiritual relations; and often neither we nor the world quite realizes what is the matter with us.
Thus we get our duties out of proportion. We exalt to the first place some very unimportant matters, and we let our really pressing duties go by the board. We put amusement on top and health underneath. We write show first and substance second. We invert heaven and earth. We read backward the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.
What is to be done about it? That boy in Durham was to be pitied and helped, not scolded; so was the boy in Ohio. We need to exercise extreme patience with these topsy-turvy people. Usually they are to blame for their upside-down condition, but other folks are probably to blame for it more than they are. There is only one remedy: education in the truth of God. The Bible has the standards, upright, straightforward, unmistakable. Let us exalt the Bible before all men, and let us test by it all our opinions and habits of life. It is written of the early disciples that they "turned the world upside down." That is because the world was wrong-side up.
The Wrong Egg.
A Kansas boy slipped a hawk's egg under one of his mother's setting hens; he thought it would hatch out a prairie chicken, but it didn't. The gentle young creature, says the account, developed the habit of perching on a post and sweeping down from that vantage-point upon his foster mother, making devastation with his claws. Some roosters tried to instruct it in barnyard etiquette, but were ignominiously routed. Finally the stranger's discourtesy took the form of cannibal feasts upon his foster brothers and sisters, and a summary close was put to his career.
This history teaches the folly of admitting to one's mind the egg of any bad habit. It grows a hawk.
Always in the Same Way.
It is said that the police and detectives can at once recognize the authors of most deeds of crime by the way in which they are committed. For example, one man would always enter a grocery hastily, saying that a friend had bet him his hat would not hold three quarts of molasses. The interested grocer would fill the stranger's hat with molasses, expecting to get paid for it, whereupon the stranger would clap it tightly on the grocer's head, the molasses running down over his face, and would calmly rifle the cash-drawer while the grocer was extricating himself. One burglar always entered shops by the fanlights over the doors. One thief had the peculiarity of making off with blocks of tar—nothing else. One man, who started a number of "get-rich-quick" establishments, was fond of oil-paintings with large trees in them, and was traced down by his constant use of them in his offices. Another crook always fitted his offices with carpet of a peculiar pattern. A certain pickpocket makes a specialty of picking pockets at funerals. And so on through an unending list.
One would think that these criminals would be bright enough to vary their methods, but they seem quite unable to do this. Crime-detectors soon discover their peculiarities, and make arrests that seem to the uninitiated mysteriously acute.
These facts constitute a lesson in the overmastering power of habit. Watch your own wrongdoing, and you will discover in it a sad monotony. It is always preceded by certain circumstances, and attended by other circumstances that are quite unvarying. You have got into the habit of it, and the chains of habit are none the less mighty because you are unconscious of them.
The realization of all this will enable you to free yourself from the dominion of sin, if you struggle against it manfully and with Christ's aid. Do not allow the precedent circumstances. Avoid the places and the acts which evidently conduce to sin in your case. Have nothing to do with these proved incitements to sin and concomitants to it. "Touch not, taste not, handle not" the mischief-making elements. Lock the windows against Satan as well as the doors, and do not leave a cranny by which he may get in.
Building It in.
No good custom is worth much till It has become incorporated. It is pleasing as an ideal. It is inspiring as an occasional effort in our lives. But it actually counts when it becomes habit in our lives. Beginners in the art of running an automobile are likely to be impatient with the rules of the road. Why cross only on the right side of the center of a square, if there are no other vehicles in the square? Why always take the right side of a curve, if the left side is shorter and no other automobiles are in sight? The answer is that to follow strictly and invariably the law of the road implants that law in our very natures, makes it a habit, so that when the emergency arises and we have no time to think we shall nevertheless do the right thing and thus avoid a disaster. It is precisely the same in the moral and spiritual realms. No occasional virtue is of much value. Virtue is chiefly useful when it has become an instinct.
A Non-Domestic Cat.
The domestic cat is domestic only by force of circumstances. It belongs to the lion family, and every member of that family is a potential wild beast. The other day a strange animal was shot on a mountain in Oregon. It was identified by a mountaineer as a pet cat which had strayed away five years before. The difficult life it had led had doubled its size and had turned it into a wild beast.
That is the way with every bad habit which we take into our lives. It may seem innocent enough, domesticated and safe. But let it loose, give it full rein, and it grows into the wild beast of sin. And bad habits are likely to get loose before we know it.