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.

[Illustration: Hands Bound.]

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.

[Illustration: Feet Bound.]

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 cou