ch them
self-control now, that they may be able to exercise it in greater
matters hereafter.

II. Habits of obedience, and order, and self-control, acquired in
childhood will be confirmed in manhood, and will remain to the end of
life. A man of business, who has spent his youth and manhood in
looking after his shop, or attending to his office, is miserable in old
age when he gives up his business and retires; he misses the old
routine, he would be happier if he could go on in the accustomed round
till he drops. The days hang heavy on his hands. The relaxation to
which he had looked forward, and for which he had worked, palls on him.
And these are habits of industry. Bad habits retain a stronger hold on
man. A bad youth and a bad manhood make a vicious old age. Many an
old man who had led a disorderly life retains his wicked habits, though
they afford him no pleasure. He goes on in vice merely because vice
has become habitual, not because it is pleasurable.

Eli, as we read in the 4th chap. I Sam., when aged ninety and eight
years, and his eyes were dim, that he could not see, "sat upon a seat
by the wayside watching." What is the meaning of this? The old man of
nearly a hundred has his chair brought outside the temple, and sits
there looking up the street, and that although his eyes are so covered
with a mist that he can see nothing. The sacred writer does not say
that Eli sat on the seat by the wayside seeing what went on, but only
straining his sightless eyeballs up the street. If we turn back to the
first chapter, we shall see that this was a habit with Eli. When he
was many years younger, some thirty years before, when Hannah came up
to Shiloh to entreat the Lord to have mercy on her and take away her
reproach, we read "Now Eli, the priest, sat upon a seat by the post of
the temple of the Lord." And his eyes, then sharp and clear, were
peering about and watching all that was going on, and examining the
faces of the people who were coming in and going out, and were engaged
in prayer. One would have thought that common decency would have kept
him from watching the face of the poor woman who was engaged in prayer,
but Eli had not acquired control over his eyes--indeed, his great
amusement was peering into people's faces and guessing what was going
on in their minds. Hannah wept as she prayed, "And it came to pass, as
she continued praying to the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth. Now
Hannah, she spake