Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 13:23
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? [then] may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
23. The v. need not mean that Judah’s sin was innate (see on Jer 6:7), but that habits of evil preclude a return to righteousness.
the Ethiopian ] Through the Jews’ intercourse with Egypt the Ethiopians were familiar to them. See Jer 38:7. They were acquainted with the “merchandise of Ethiopia” (Isa 45:14), which consisted of gold, ebony, and elephants’ tusks (Herod. III. 97, 114), and jewels (Job 28:19).
the leopard ] See ch. Jer 5:6.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This verse answers the question, May not Judah avert this calamity by repentance? No: because her sins are too inveterate. By the Ethiopian (Hebrew: Cushite) is meant not the Cushite of Arabia but of Africa, i. e., the negro.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jer 13:23
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
The Ethiopian
I. The question and its answer.
1. The difficulty in the sinners case lies–
(1) In the thoroughness of the operation. The Ethiopian can wash, or paint; but he cannot change that which is part and parcel of himself. A sinner cannot change his own nature.
(2) In the fact that the will is itself diseased by sin. In mans will lies the essence of the difficulty: he can not, means that he does not will to have it done. He is morally unable.
(3) In the strength of habit. Practice in transgression has forged chains, and bound the man to evil.
(4) In the pleasure of sin, which fascinates and enslaves the mind.
(5) In the appetite for sin, which gathers intensity from indulgence. Drunkenness, lechery, covetousness, etc., are a growing force.
(6) In the blindness of the understanding, which prevents men from seeing the evil of their ways, or noting their danger. Conscience is drugged into a deep sleep.
(7) In the growing hardness of the heart, which becomes more stolid and unbelieving every day, till nothing affects it.
(8) In the evident fact that outward means prove ineffectual: like sope and nitre on a negro, they fail to touch the living blackness.
2. For all these reasons we answer the question in the negative: sinners can no more renew themselves than Ethiopians can change their skins.
(1) Why then preach to them? It is Christs command, and we are bound to obey. Their inability does not hinder our ministry, for power goes with the word.
(2) Why tell them that it is their duty to repent? Because it is so: moral inability is no excuse: the law is not to be lowered because man has grown too evil to keep it.
(3) Why tell them of this moral inability? To drive them to self-despair, and make them look to Christ.
II. Another question and answer.
1. All things are possible with God (Mat 19:26).
2. The Holy Spirit has special power over the human heart.
3. The Lord Jesus has determined to work this wonder, and for this purpose He came into this world, and died, and rose again (Mat 1:21).
4. Many such jet-black sinners have been totally changed: among ourselves there are such, and in all places such may be found.
5. The Gospel is prepared with that end.
6. God has made His Church long for such transformations, and prayer has been offered that they may now be wrought. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Evil habits a great difficulty to reformation of life
Habit may be looked on–
1. As a necessary law.
(1) A facility of performing an act in proportion to its repetition.
(2) A tendency grows up in us to repeat what we have often done.
2. As a beneficent law. It is because acts grow easier and generally more attractive the oftener they are performed, that men advance in the arts, the sciences, the morality, and the religion of life.
3. As an abused law. The text is a strong expression of its abuse. The words of course are not to be taken in an absolutely unqualified sense. The idea is great difficulty. Our subject is the difficulty of converting old sinners, men accustomed to do evil.
I. It is a self-created difficulty.
1. Habit is but an accumulation of acts, and in each of the aggregate acts the actor was free.
2. The sinner himself feels that he has given his moral complexion the Ethiopian stain, and painted his character with the leopard spots. This fact shows–
(1) The moral force of human nature. Man forging chains to manacle his spirit, creating a despot to control his energies and his destiny.
(2) The egregious folly of wickedness. It makes man his own enemy, tyrant, destroyer.
II. It is a gradually augmenting difficulty. Habit is a cord. It is strengthened with every action. At first it is as fine as silk, and can be broken with but little effort. As it proceeds it becomes a cable strong enough to hold a man of war, steady amidst boisterous billows and furious winds. Habit is a momentum. It increases with motion. At first a childs hand can arrest the progress. As the motion increases it gets a power difficult for an army of giants to overcome. Habit is a river, at its headspring you can arrest its progress with ease, and turn it in any direction you please, but as it approaches the ocean it defies opposition, and rolls with a thunderous majesty into the sea.
1. The awful condition of the sinner.
2. The urgency for an immediate decision Procrastination is folly.
3. The necessity of the special prayers of the Church on behalf of aged sinners.
III. It is a possibly conquerable difficulty.
1. The history of conversions shows the possibility of overcoming this difficulty.
2. The mightiness of Christ shows the possibility of overcoming this difficulty, He saves to the uttermost.
Uttermost in relation to the enormity of the sin–uttermost in relation to the age of the sinner. (Homilist.)
Evil habits and their cure
If we compare together these words of Jeremiah with other words on the same subject by Isaiah we arrive at a more complete view of the force of evil habits than is presented to us by this single text. Come, now, let us reason together, though your sins, etc. This is the essential message of Christ, that there is forgiveness of sins–that the transgressions of the past can be blotted out and he who has done evil learn to do good. This doctrine was very early objected to. It was one of the arguments that the educated heathen in the first ages of the Christian Church brought against Christianity that it declared that possible which they believed to be impossible. It is manifest to everyone, writes Celsus, the first great polemical adversary of Christianity, who flourished in the second century, that those who are disposed by nature to vice, and are accustomed to it, cannot be transformed by punishment, much less by mercy, for to transform nature is a matter of extreme difficulty, but our Lord has taught us that what is impossible with men is possible with God, and Christianity proved again and again its Divine origin in accomplishing this very work which, according to men, was impossible. Against the sweeping assertion of Celsus to the contrary, we may place the living examples of thousands upon thousands who through the Gospel have been turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. To trace the steps of such a change in any particular case is one of the most fascinating studies in biography; but no study will ever explain all, for in the work of a souls regeneration there is a mystery which can never be brought into the mould of thought. The wind, said Christ, bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit, but mans part in the work can be conceived, and this is what we should strive to understand, so that we may work with God, and there are three chief ways in which we may do so:
1. There is resistance. As every yielding to temptation strengthens a bad habit, so every act of resistance weakens it. It was the belief of the North American Indians that the strength of the slain foe passed into the body of the slayer; and in the moral world it is so, for not only does resistance take from the force of habit, it strengthens the will against it, so that in a double way acts of resistance undermine the force of habit.
2. Then there is education. Every man who is not wholly lost to a sense of right-doing feels every time he gives way to an evil habit a silent protest working in his breast, something that tells him he is wrong, that urges him to do differently, that interferes with the pleasure of the sin, mingling with it a sense of dissatisfaction. This protest will generally take the form of urging us towards the good which is opposite to the evil in which we are indulging. And by educating, by drawing out the desire after this good more and more, the evil is more and more put to flight. Thus the way to overcome inattentiveness of the mind is not so much to fix our attention on the fault, as to cultivate and educate its opposite, concentration of mind.
3. Once again, there is prayer. It has been said that to labour is to pray, and that is true in a measure; and those who labour in resisting evil habits and in cultivating good ones are, in a sense, by such actions praying to God; but anyone who has ever prayed knows that that definition does not exhaust the meaning or force of prayer. Prayer is more than labour–it is having intercourse with God. It is one of the chief means by which we are made conscious that we are not alone in the battle of life; but that there is One with us who is our unchangeable Friend, who looks down upon us with an interest that never flags, and a love that never grows cold. (Arthur Brooke, M. A.)
Inability to do good arising from vicious habits
I. To explain the nature of evil habits, particularly the tendency of them, to render men indisposed to moral goodness. No habit leaveth a man in a state of indifference, it putteth a strong bias upon his mind to act according to its direction, as experience showeth in innumerable instances, and in the most ordinary affairs, and even amusements of life; how naturally and easily do we fall into the beaten track, and hold on the accustomed course, though our reason discerneth no importance in it at all! Nay, by the influence of habit, trifles are magnified into matters of great moment, at least they engage the desire, and determine the active powers as if they were, so that we find it very difficult to break them off. Again, the only rational way of reclaiming men from ill practices is, by convincing them that they are ill, and that they must be attended with unhappy consequences to themselves: but the effect of habits is to darken the understanding, to fill the mind with prejudices, and to render it unattentive to reason. How then shall they that are accustomed to do evil learn to do well, since they are biassed against it, being expert in the contrary practice, and since they have made themselves in a great measure incapable of instruction?
II. Consider particularly how we are to understand that disability to do good which is contracted by being accustomed to do evil.
1. That the impotence is not total nor equal to that which is natural, will appear from the following considerations.
(1) Where there is a total disability, and equal to that which is natural, there can be no guilt.
(2) It is very well known in a multitude of instances, that men by strong resolutions, and a vigorous exertion of the natural force of their minds, have actually conquered very inveterate habits, and turned to a quite different way of living.
2. You see then where the difference lieth, that it is in ourselves, and what that impotence is which ariseth from habits, that it is no more than irresolution which is properly the fault of the mind, and to be charged wholly upon it.
3. God waiteth to be gracious to them, unwilling they should perish, if they are disposed on their part to submit to the remedy which His mercy hath provided. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Habits
1. Everyone remembers how much of his discipline as a child was connected with points of manner; how often he was reproved for little rudenesses, etc. And if by the neglect of others or by his own he formed any such habit, does he not remember too how much pain and effort it cost him to get rid of it, however little pleasure there might be in indulging it, or however easy it might appear, in prospect, to part with it at any moment when it might become troublesome? And I need not remind any of you of the force of habit as shown, in an opposite way, in matters which, though they occupy much of your time and thoughts elsewhere, must yet be regarded as trifling in comparison with the graver subjects which ought to fill our minds here; I mean, in those exercises of bodily strength and skill which form so large a part of our youthful training.
2. But now go one step farther, and observe the effect of habit, for good or evil, upon the mind. If language be your chief subject of study, the repeated sight of certain symbols, which were at first entirely strange and unintelligible to you, makes them familiar, and associates them forever in your mind with the ideas which they symbolise; and the repeated formation for yourselves of words and sentences in that foreign language, according to certain rules, gives you at last an almost intuitive and instantaneous perception of what is right and beautiful in it. This is the reward of the diligent; their reward in proportion to the original gift of mind for which they are not responsible, and to their diligence in the use of it for which they are. And if this be, in intellectual matters, the force of habit for good, need I speak of its influence for evil? Those repeated neglects which make up the school life of an idle or presumptuous boy; the little separate acts, or rather omissions of act, which seem to him now so trifling; the postponements, half-learnings, or total abandonments of lessons; the hours of inattention, vacancy, or wandering thoughts, which he spends in school; the shallowness and looseness and slovenliness–still worse, the too frequent unfairness–of his best preparations of work; these things too are all going to form habits.
3. The soul too is the creature of habit. Have you not all found it so? When you have for two or three days together forgotten your prayers, has it not become, even in that short time, more easy to neglect, more difficult to resume them? When you have left God out of sight in your daily life; when you have fallen into an unchristian and irreligious state of mind and life, how soon have you found this state become as it were natural to you; how much less, day by day, did the idea of living without God alarm you; how much more tranquil, if not peaceful, did conscience become as you departed farther and farther in heart from the living God! But there is another, an opposite, habit of the soul, that of living to God, with God, and in God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the other, yet like it formed by a succession of acts, each easier than the last, and each making the next easier still.
4. I have spoken separately of habits of the body, the mind, and the soul. It remains that we should combine these, and speak a few serious words of those habits which affect the three. Such habits there are, for good and for evil. There is a devotion of the whole man to God, which affects every part of his nature. Such is the habit of a truly religious life; such a life as some have sought in the seclusion of a cloister, but which God wills should be led in that station of life, whatsoever it be, to which it has pleased or shall please Him to call us. One day so spent indeed, is the earnest, and not the earnest only hut the instrument too, of the acquisition of the inheritance of the saints in light. How can we, after such thoughts, turn to their very opposite, and speak of habits affecting for evil conjointly the body, the mind, and the soul? Yet such habits there are, and the seed of them is often sown in boyhood.
5. It is the fashion with some to undervalue habits. The grace of God, they say, and say truly, can change the whole man into the opposite of what he is. It is most true: with God–we bless Him for the word, it is our one hope–all things are possible. But does God give any encouragement in His Word to that sort of recklessness as to early conduct, which some practically justify by their faith in the atonement? Is it not the whole tenour of His Word that children should be brought up from the first in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?
6. I have spoken, as the subject led me, of good habits and evil: there is yet a third possibility, or one which seems such. There is such a thing, in common language at least, as having no habits. Yes, we have known such persons, all of us; persons who have no regularity and no stability within or without; persons who one day seem not far from the kingdom of God, and the next have drifted away so far from it that we wonder at their inconsistency. As you would beware of bad habits, so beware also of having no habits. Grasp tenaciously, and never let go, those few elements at least of virtuous habit which you acquired in earliest childhood in a Christian home. You will be very thankful for them one day. (Dean Vaughan.)
Importance of the rigid formation of habits
I. How far the influence of habit extends. Habit extends its influence over the body, the mind, and the conscience The body, considered merely as an animal frame, is much under the influence of habit. Habit inures the body to cold or heat; renders it capable of labour, or patient of confinement. Through habit the sailor rides upon the rocking wave without experiencing that sickness which the unaccustomed voyager is almost sure to feel. I might now proceed from the body to the mind, only there are some cases which are of a mixed nature, partaking both of body and mind, in which we neither contemplate the body apart from the mind, nor the mind apart from the body; and habit has its influence upon both. Such is the pernicious use of strong liquors, habit increases the desire, diminishes the effect of them. So all undue indulgence of the body increases the desire of further indulgence. The appetite by constant gratifications becomes uncontrollable; and the mind also grows debauched, is rendered incapable of purer pleasures, and altogether unfit for the exercises of religion. Nor is it only through the body that habit has its effect upon the mind. There are habits purely mental, as well as habits purely bodily. Profaneness may become a habit; a man may contract a habit of swearing, a habit of speaking irreverently of sacred things. So the anger of a passionate man is often called constitutional. Further, the Apostle Paul speaks of those whose mind and conscience is defiled. Habit has its effect on the conscience also. One would think that the more frequently a man had committed a fault, the more severely would his conscience upbraid him for it. But the very contrary is the case: his conscience has become familiar with the sin, as well as his other faculties of mind or body.
II. The difficulty of overcoming habits. Even in the case of those who have been soberly and virtuously brought up, and whose life is unstained by a course of profane or licentious conduct, there is a principle of evil which keeps them far from God. They have no love to Him, no delight in Him, no communion with Him. How much more palpably impossible is it for the wretched sinner to break his chains, when sin by long indulgence has become habitual; when the body itself has been made subject to it, the mind polluted by it, and the conscience seared as with a red-hot iron! Does experience teach you to expect that these men will correct themselves! It may be that such men may change one sin for another, a new bad habit, as it acquires strength, may supplant an old one, the sins of youth may give way to the sins of age. But this is not ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well. It is only altering the manner of doing evil. With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible. Divine grace can not only take away the greatest guilt; it can also enlighten the darkest understanding, and sanctify the most corrupt heart.
III. Address two descriptions of characters.
1. Those who are still walking in their accustomed way of evil.
2. Those who have been delivered from it. (J. Fawcett, M. A.)
Habits
The formation of habits goes on in part by conscious volition or purpose. Men set themselves at work in certain directions to acquire accomplishments and various elements of power. Thus are habits formed. And the same process goes on under a more general schooling. We are living in society at large. Not only are we influenced by that which goes on in our households, but there is the reflection of a thousand households in the companionship into which we are thrown day by day, which influences us. The world of most persons is a microcosm with a small population; and they reflect the influence of the spheres in which they have had their training and their culture. The influences which surround them, for good and evil, for industry or indolence, are well-nigh infinite in number and variety. Every man should have an end in view; and every day he should adopt means to that end, and follow it from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year. Then he is the architect of, and he is building, his own fortune. Out of a careless and unarmoured way spring up mischievous habits which at first are not very striking, nor very disastrous. Prominent among them is the habit of carelessness respecting the truth–carelessness in respect to giving ones word in the form of a promise. Never make a promise without a distinct and deliberate thought as to whether you can fulfil it; or not; and having made a promise, keep it at all hazard, even though it be to your damage. Do not break your word. Then, aside from that mode of falsifying, men fall into the habit of uttering untruths. The love of truth is not in them. They do not esteem truth for itselfs sake. They regard it as an instrument, as a coin, as it were; and when it is profitable they speak the truth, but when it is not profitable they are careless of it. Multitudes of persons by suppression falsify and they use so thin and gauzy a veil as this: Well, what I said was strictly true. Yes; but what you did not say was false. For you to tell the truth so that no one shall suspect the truth, and so that it shall produce a false and illusory impression–that has an evil effect upon others, and a still more evil effect upon your own character. The desire to conform your speech to Yea, yea, and Nay, nay; the desire for simplicity of truth; the desire to state things as they are, so that going from your mind they shall produce pictures in anothers mind precisely as they lie in your own–that is manly. Still more likely are men by extravagance to fall from strict habits of truth. We live in an age of adjectives, Nothing is natural. The whole force of adjectives is exhausted on the ordinary affairs of life, and nothing is left for the weightier matters of thought and speech. Men form a habit in this direction, Frequently it is formed because it is very amusing. When a man has a good reputation for speaking the truth, and he speaks in a back-handed way, at first it is comical; as, for instance, where a man speaks of himself as being a dishonourable fellow when he is known to be the very pink of honesty and scrupulousness; or, where a man speaks smilingly of trying with all his might to live within his income, when he is known to roll in riches. Such extravagances have a pleasing effect once or twice; and not only individuals, but families and circles fall into the habit of using extravagant words and expressions, because under certain conditions they are amusing; but they cease to be so when they are applied to the common elements of life, and are heard every day. They become altogether distasteful to persons of refinement, and are in every way bad. The same is true of bluntness. Now and then the coming in of a blunt expression from a good, strong, honest man is like a clap of thunder in a hot, sultry day in summer–and we like it; but when a man makes himself disagreeable under the pretence that bluntness of speech is more honest than the refined expressions of polite society, he violates good taste and the true proportions of things. Nor is it strange, under such circumstances, that a man feels himself easily led to the last and worst form of lying–deliberate falsification; so that he uses untruth as an instrument by which to accomplish his ends. Closely connected with this obliteration of moral delicacy there comes in a matter of which I will speak, reading from Ephesians, the 5th chapter–All uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, etc. Where men tip their wit with salacious stories; where men indulge in double entendre; where men report things whose very edge is uncomely and unwholesome; where men talk among themselves in such a way that before they begin they look around and say, Are there any ladies present? where men converse with an abominable indecorum and filthiness in repartee, jesting with things that are fine, and smearing things that are pure, the apostle says, It is not convenient. The original is, It is not becoming. In other words, it is unmanly. That is the force of the passage. And we are forbidden to indulge in these things. Yet very many men run through the whole of them, sink into the depths of pollution, and pass away. I scarcely need say that in connection with such tendencies as I have reprobated will come in the temptation to a low tone of conduct socially; to coarse and vulgar manners, and to carelessness of the rights of others. By good manners I mean the equity of benevolence. If you will take the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, and, though it be perverting the text a little, substitute for charity the word politeness, you will have a better version of what true politeness is than has ever been written anywhere else. No man has any right to call himself a gentleman who is oblivious of that equity of kindness which should exist under all circumstances between man and man. I have noticed a want of regard for the aged. Grey hairs are not honourable in the sight of multitudes of young men. They have not trained themselves to rise up and do obeisance to the patriarch. I have observed that there was a sort of politeness manifested on the part of young men if the recipient of it was young and fair; but I have noticed that when poor women come into a car, sometimes bearing their babes in their arms, young men, instead of getting up and giving them their places, are utterly indifferent to them. The habits of our times are not courteous, and you are not likely to learn from them the art of good manners, which means kindness and equity between man and man in the ordinary associations of life; and if you would endow yourself with this Christian excellence you must make it a matter of deliberate consideration and assiduous education. I will mention one more habit into which we are liable to fall, and toward which the whole nation seems to tend: I mean the habit of loving evil. I refer not to the love of doing evil, but to the love of discussing evil. True Christian charity, it is also said in the 13th of 1st Corinthians, rejoiceth not in iniquity. A man ought to be restrained from any commerce with that which is evil–evil news, evil stories, evil surmises, evil insinuations, innuendoes, scandals, everything evil that relates to society. Set yourselves, then, as Christian men and women, to abhor evil and to rejoice not in iniquity, but in the truth. I will speak of one other habit–namely, the growing habit of profanity. Men accustom themselves to such irreverence in the use of words which are sacred, that at last they cease to be words of power to them. Men swear by God, by the Almighty, by the Lord Jesus Christ, in a manner which shocks the feelings and wounds the hearts of truly conscientious people. And they who thus addict themselves to rudeness of speech violate the law of good society. Not only that, but; they do it uselessly. You do not give weight to what you are saying in conversation by the employment of expletives. There is no statement which is more forcible than that which is expressed in simple language. And in giving way to the habit you are doing violence to the Word of God, to your best moral instincts, and to your ideal of the sanctity of your Ruler and your Judge; and I beseech of you who are beginning life to take heed of this tendency, and avoid it. We are all building a character. What that character is to be it doth not yet appear. We are working in the dark, as it were; but by every thought and action we am laying the stones, tier upon tier, that are going into the structure; and what it to be the light of the eternal world will reveal. It is, therefore, wise for every man to pray, Search me, O God; try me and see if there be any evil way at me. It is worth our while to go back to the Old Testament again, and say, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. The cleanest Book, the most honourable Book, the most manly Book, the truest, the simplest, and the noblest Book that ever was written or thought of is this Book of God. In the Psalms of David, in the Proverbs of Solomon, in the whole New Testament, you cannot go amiss. Them is not one place where you will be led down morally, where the ideal is not noble, and where it does not ascend higher and higher, till you stand in Zion and before God. (H. W. Beecher.)
Of the difficulty of reforming vicious habits
I. The great difficulty of reforming vicious habits, or of changing a bad course, to those who have been deeply engaged in it and long accustomed to it. This will fully appear–
1. If we consider the nature of all habits, whether good, or bad, or indifferent. A rooted habit becomes a governing principle, and bears almost an equal sway in us with that which is natural. It is a kind of a new nature superinduced, and even as hard to be expelled, as some things which are primitively and originally natural.
2. This difficulty ariseth more especially from the particular nature of evil and vicious habits. These, because they are suitable to our corrupt nature, and conspire with the inclinations of it, are likely to be of a much quicker growth and improvement, and in a shorter space, and with less care and endeavour, to arrive at maturity and strength, than the habits of grace and goodness.
3. The difficulty of this change ariseth likewise from the natural and judicial consequences of a great progress and long continuance in an evil course.
II. The case of these persons, though it be extremely difficult, is not quite desperate; but after all, there is some ground of hope and encouragement left, that they may yet be reclaimed and brought to goodness.
1. There is left, even in the worst of men, a natural sense of the evil and unreasonableness of sin; which can hardly be ever totally extinguished in human nature.
2. Very bad men, when they have any thoughts of becoming better, are apt to conceive some good hopes of Gods grace and mercy.
3. Who knows what men thoroughly roused and startled may resolve, and do? And a mighty resolution will break through difficulties which seem insuperable.
4. The grace and assistance of God when sincerely sought, is never to be despaired of. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
The difficulty of repentance
I. From the nature of habits in general of vicious habits in particular. Concerning habits, we may observe that there are many things which we practise at first with difficulty, and which at last, by daily and frequent repetition, we perform not only without labour, but without premeditation and design. Thus it is with the habits of memory. By frequent practice and slow degrees we acquire the use of speech: we retain a surprising variety of words of arbitrary sounds, which we make the signs of things. Thus it is in the habits of the imagination. When we accustom our minds to certain objects, when we call them often before us, these objects, which at first were perhaps as indifferent as any other, become familiar to us, they appear uncalled and force themselves upon us. Thus it is with the habits of sin. They are acquired like other habits by repeated acts; they fix themselves upon us in the same manner, and are corrected with the same difficulty. A sinner by long offending contracts an aversion from his duty, and weakens his power of deliberating and choosing upon wise motives. By giving way to his passions he has made them ungovernable; they rise of themselves, and stay not for his consent, and by every victory over him they gain new strength, and he grows less able to resist them. His understanding and reason become unserviceable to him. At first, when he did amiss, he was ashamed of it; but shame is lost by long offending. Add to this, that vicious habits make a deeper impression and gain faster upon us than good habits. Sin recommends itself to our senses by bringing present profit or pleasure, whilst religion consists frequently in renouncing present profit or pleasure for a greater interest at a distance, and so recommends itself, not to our senses, but to our reason; upon which account it is more difficult to be good than to be bad. One being asked, what could be the reason why weeds grew more plentifully than corn? answered, Because the earth was the mother of weeds, but the stepmother of corn; that is, the one she produced of her own accord, the other not till she was compelled to it by mans toil and industry. This may not unfitly be applied to the human mind, which on account of its intimate union with the body, and commerce with sensible objects, easily and willingly performs the things of the flesh, but will not bring forth the spiritual fruits of piety and virtue, unless cultivated with assiduity and application.
II. From experience. There are few who forsake any vice to which they are remarkably addicted. The truth of this may be easiest observed in those faults where the body seems not to be much concerned, such as pride, conceit, levity of mind, rashness in judging and determining, censoriousness, malice, cruelty, wrath, moroseness, envy, selfishness, avarice. These bad dispositions seldom forsake a person in whom they are fixed. Besides, many of them are of so deceitful a nature, that the mind entertains them and knows it not; the man thinks himself free from faults which to every other person are most visible.
III. Scripture concurs with reason and experience. When the Scriptures speak of evil habits, they make use of figures as strong and bold as language can utter and the imagination conceive, to set forth their pernicious nature. Persons in that condition are said to be enclosed in a snare, to be taken captives, to have sold themselves to work wickedness, to be in a state of slavery. Even those passages which contain great encouragement and favourable promises to repentance, inform us at the same time of the difficulty of amending. Our Saviour gives a plain and familiar representation of it. A shepherd, says He, rejoices more over one sheep which was lost and is found, than over ninety-and-nine which went not astray. Why so? For this, amongst other reasons, because he could not reasonably expect such good fortune, and had little hopes of finding a creature exposed to a thousand dangers, and unable to shift for itself.
IV. Reflections useful to persons of all ages and of all dispositions.
1. If the words of the text were to be taken rigorously and in the strictest sense, it would be a folly to exhort a habitual sinner to repentance, and an unreasonable thing to expect from him a natural impossibility; but it is certain that they mean no more than an extreme difficulty.
2. There are persons who sincerely profess the Christian religion, who fear God and desire to be in His favour, but whose lives are not so conformable to their belief as they ought to be, who are sorry for their faults, and fall into them again, who make not the progress in goodness which they acknowledge to be justly expected from them, and who have not that command over their passions which by a little more resolution and self-denial they might acquire. Such persons should seriously consider the difficulty of reforming bad habits, and the extreme danger of that state: for though it be not their present condition, yet if they use not timely caution, sad effects may ensue.
3. These sad examples should be a warning to those whose obedience is so incomplete and sullied with so many defects, whose love of virtue is not equal and uniform, and whose affections are placed sometimes on God and religion, and sometimes on the follies and vanities of the world.
4. There are Christians who abstain from known and deliberate transgressions, who strive to make a daffy progress in goodness, and to perform an acceptable service to God. The difficulty of reforming vicious habits may warn them to be upon their guard, that after they have set out well and proceeded well, they fail not at last, nor lose a reward near at hand.
5. They who have wisely and happily preserved themselves from evil habits ought to be very thankful to God, by whose blessing they are free from that heavy bondage, and strangers to the sad train of evils which attend it. (J. Jortin, D. D.)
The sinners helplessness
I. If man cannot turn himself to happiness and God, why not?
1. Because of the force of sinful habit. The man who has his arm paralysed cannot use it for his own defence; and sin deprives the soul of power, it paralyses the soul. The man thinks he can pray, but when the time comes, he finds that sinful habits are so strong upon him that he cannot. I well recollect, one winter night, when the storm was raging and the wind was howling, being called up to attend one who was in the agonies of death, and who had long been living an avowed life of sin, but he became anxious at the last to know if it were possible for him to find a place of safety; and never shall I forget the answer which that poor man made to me, when I directed him to pray: Pray, sir! I cannot. I have lived in sin too long to pray. I have tried to pray, but I cannot, I know not how; and if this be all, I must perish. A long continued life of sin had paralysed that mans soul; and it does so, consciously or unconsciously, in every case.
2. Because of the fault of his sinful nature. You know well, that if the glorious sun in the heavens were to shine upon the face of a man who is naturally dead he would neither see it nor feel its warmth. If you were to present to that man all the riches of the world he would have no eye to look at them, no heart to wish for them, no hand to put forth to grasp them. And so with the man who is unconverted. He may be all alive to sin, he may have all the powers of his mind in full exercise, but his heart is alienated from God; he has no wish for the unsearchable riches of Christ; he has no desire to become enriched with those treasures which shall endure forever.
3. Because of the enmity of Satan. Do you see that poor man who has been toiling in all the heat of a summers day with a heavy burden upon him? His strength is now gone, and he has fallen into the ditch; and when he tries to raise himself, do you see that tyrant who has got his foot upon his back, and who plunges him again into the ditch and keeps him down? You have them a picture of the enmity and power of Satan.
II. If man cannot turn himself, if he be like the Ethiopian who cannot change his skin, why tell him of it? Is it not to pour insult upon his miserable and abject condition? Oh no! It is necessary to tell him of his helplessness.
1. Because God commands it. His eye is upon the poor prodigal in all his wanderings: He knows the desperate wickedness and deceitfulness of his heart; He, the Lord, searches the heart; He knows what it is best for fallen man to know and to be made acquainted with; and He tells those whom He sends to be His ambassadors to preach the Word, to proclaim the whole counsel of God, to keep back nothing whatsoever that is contained in the revealed will of God.
2. Because there must be a sense of need before deliverance can be experienced. If a man were to have an idea, when he was in a building surrounded by danger, that whenever he pleased he could get up and take the key out of his pocket and unlock the door and walk out, then he might indeed sit still and laugh at those who would fain arouse him to a sense of his danger; but if you can tell the man that the key which he fancies he possesses he has lost–if you can get him to feel for it, if you can once bring him to the conviction that he has lost it, and that he cannot get out of the building in which he is, then you rouse him from his state of apathy, then you bring him to the point at which he is ready to welcome the hand of any deliverer.
3. God has promised to give us His Holy Spirit. Here the sinners objections are met. If he has no power, yet if he has the wish to be delivered from his dreadful state, God promises to pour out His Spirit; and that Spirit leads to Jesus, convinces of sin, and then takes of the things of Jesus and applies them to the sinners soul
III. Inferences.
1. Without Christ men must perish.
2. Is there not a danger of delay in this matter?
3. Think of the responsibility of this present moment. (W. Cadman, M. A.)
Custom in sin exceeding dangerous
I. The defilement of sin.
1. Its inherence.
(1) This should humble and abase us in consideration of our vileness; not lead us to excuse our sins.
(2) We see here what cause we have to desire that God would change our nature, and bestow a new nature on us.
2. Its monstrousness.
(1) It alters a mans country; turns an Israelite into an Ethiopian, and thus causes a degeneration there.
(2) It also alters a mans nature; gives him the quality and disposition even of the beasts, makes him a leopard, and thus makes a degeneration there.
3. Its multiplication. A beast of divers colours, marks, and spots (Gal 5:19).
4. Its universality. A deformity in all parts and members (Isa 1:5; Gen 6:5).
II. The entanglements of sin.
1. The qualification or condition of the persons accustomed to do evil. More correctly, taught to do evil. Taught–
(1) By doctrine and instruction. There is a great deal of such teaching in the world (Mat 5:19; Tit 1:11; Mar 7:7; 2Ti 4:3-4).
(2) By pattern and example. That which men see to be practised they soon and easily fall into.
(3) By practice and use accustomed to do evil. Use makes perfect.
2. The invincible necessity which follows upon custom in sin: they cannot do good.
(1) An impotency to good (Gal 5:17).
(2) A precipitancy unto evil (Ecc 8:11).
Conclusion–
1. Take heed of having anything to do with sin at first.
2. If any should fall into sin, do not stay in it, but hasten out of it with speed (Rom 6:1).
3. Take heed of relapses, and falling back to sin again (2Pe 2:20). (T. Herren, D. D.)
The alarming power of sin
I. The habits of men are strengthened and confirmed by indulgence. Even habits which relate to matters of indifference become inveterate, and are with great difficulty modified and overcome. The longer a man continues in sinful courses, the more fully his mind becomes trained in these habits of resistance to all that is good. He is insensibly led on from one course of wickedness to another, till he is under a sort of necessity of sinning. He has taken so many steps in this downward road, and his progress has become so accelerated and impetuous that he cannot resist it.
II. The influence of this world, as men advance in life, usually becomes more perplexing, and a greater hindrance to their conversion. While the eye is pleased, the ear regaled, and all the senses delighted, there is everything to corrupt and destroy. A man in middle life may, now and then, feel powerful inducements to become pious; the grasp of the world may, for a short season, be partially relaxed; and he may withdraw himself for a little from his old companions, to think of the scenes of that invisible world to which he is hastening; but soon his courage and self-denial fail him, and he is soothed or frightened away from his purpose. Some golden bait, some earnest entreaty, some subtle stratagem, some unhallowed influence disheartens him, and he goes back again to the world. The world is still his idol. The concerns of time absorb the attention and exhaust the vigour of his mind. Having thrown himself into the current, he becomes weaker and weaker, and though the precipice is near, he cannot now stem the tide and reach the shore.
III. As years increase, men become less interested in the subject of religion, and more obdurate and averse to any alteration in their moral character. The season of sensitiveness and ardent affection is gone by. The only effect which the most powerful instructions or the best adapted means of grace are apt to have upon such a mind, is increasing insensibility and hardness, and greater boldness in iniquity. They cannot endure to be disturbed in their sins. When you urge the claims of piety upon them, they treat the whole matter with neglect and contempt. They have made up their minds to run the hazard of perdition, rather than be roused to the severe and dreadful effort of forsaking their sins. Here, too, is the danger of men accustomed to impenitence. The scenes of eternity to such men have a melancholy and direful aspect. Everything is conspiring to harden, deceive, and destroy them; and there is little probability that these augmented obstacles to their conversion will ever be removed.
IV. The thought of multiplied and long-continued transgression is very apt to discourage all attempts at repentance. Not unfrequently they will tell you, Once the work might have been performed, but it is now too late; the favourable opportunity is past; human life is but a dream, and the day of hope is gone by! It is a dark–very dark problem, whether persons of this description will ever repent and believe the Gospel. It is true that Gods mercies are infinite; that those who seek Him shall find Him; that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin; and that while there is life there may be hope; and yet a more hopeless condition this side eternity cannot easily be conceived, than the condition of such a man.
V. There is awful reason to apprehend that God will leave men of this description to perish in their sins. If we look into the Bible, we shall find that most of the prophets and apostles, as well as those who were converted through their instrumentality, were called into the kingdom of God in childhood, or youth, or in the dawn and vigour of manhood. One of the distinctive features of all revivals of religion is, that they have prevailed principally among the young. It has also been remarked, that in ordinary seasons, the individuals who have occasionally been brought into the kingdom of Christ, with few exceptions, have been from those not habituated to impenitence. Almost the only exception to this remark is found in places where men have never sat under faithful preaching, and never enjoyed a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, until late in life. In such places I have known persons brought into the vineyard at the eleventh hour. And this is also true of heathen lands. But even here, there are comparatively few instances of conversion from among those who have grown old in sin. Conclusion–
1. Admonition to the aged. What the means of grace could do for you, they have probably clone; and that your day of merciful visitation has well nigh reached its last limits. God still waits that He may be gracious. And He may wait till the last sand of life has fallen. But, oh, how ineffably important to you is the present hour! Your hoary hairs may be even now a crown of glory, if found in the way of righteousness. Let not another hour be lost! This very call rejected may seal our destiny.
2. Our subject addresses those who are in middle life. The period most auspicious to the interests of your immortality is gone. You are now in the midst of your most important designs and pursuits, and probably at the zenith of your earthly glory. Everything now conspires to turn away your thoughts from God and eternity. Better leave every other object unattained than your eternal salvation. Better give up every other hope, than the hope of heaven. Oh, what a flood of sorrows will roll in upon you by and by, when you see that the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and you are not saved!
3. Our subject addresses the young. Yours is the season of hope. If you become early devoted to God, you may live to accomplish much for His cause and kingdom in the world; your influence and example may allure multitudes around you to the love and practice of godliness; and you may be delivered from the guilt of that destructive influence, which will plant thorns in your dying pillow. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Habit
When in a vacant hour we fall into reverie, and the images of the past come pouring out of the storehouse of memory at their own sweet will, how arbitrary appears the succession of our thoughts! With a rapidity greater than that of seven-leagued boots, the mind passes from country to country, and from century to century. This moment it is in Norway, the next in Australia, the next in Palestine, the next in Madagascar. But this apparent arbitrariness is not real. In reality thought is linked to thought, and for the wildest leaps and most arbitrary turns of the fancy there is in every ease a sufficient reason. You are thinking of Norway; but that makes you recall a friend who is now in Australia, with whom you visited that picturesque country; and so your thought flies to Australia. Then, being in Australia, you think of the Southern Cross, because you have been reading a poem in which that constellation was described as the most remarkable feature of the southern hemisphere. Then the likeness of the name of the cross makes you think of the Cross of Christ, and so you pass over centuries and find yourself in Palestine; and the Cross of Christ makes you think of the sufferings of Christians, and your mind is in Madagascar, where the missionaries have recently been exposed to suffering. Thus, you see, beneath the phenomena apparently most arbitrary, there is law; and even for the most apparently unaccountable flights and leaps of the mind there is always a good reason.
I. The origin of habit. Habit may be conceived to arise in this way. When, in the revolution of time–of the day, or the week, or the month, or the year,–the point comes round at which we have been thinking of anything, or have done anything, by the law of the association of ideas we think of it again, or do it again. For instance, when day dawns we awake. We get out of bed because we have done it at that time before. At a later hour we take breakfast, and go away to business, for the same reason; and so on through the day. When Sunday morning comes our thoughts turn to sacred things, and we make ready to go to the house of God, because we have always been accustomed to do that. The more frequently anything has been done, the stronger is habit, and frequency acts on habit through something else. Frequency gives ease and swiftness to the doing of anything. We do anything easily and swiftly which we have done often. Even things which seemed impossible can not only be done, but done with facility, if they have been done often. A celebrated character tells that in a month he learned to keep four balls up in the air and at the same time to read a book and understand it. Even tasks that caused pain may come to be done with pleasure, and things that were done at first only with groans and tears may at last become a source of triumph. It is not only the mind that is involved in habit. Even the body is subdued to its service. Do we not recognise the soldier by his gait, the student by his stoop, and the merchant by his bustle? And in the parts of the body that are invisible–the muscles and nerves–there is a still greater change due to habit. Hence the counsel of the philosopher, and I think it is a very profound counsel: Make your nervous system your ally instead of your enemy in the battle of life.
II. Excessive habit. Habit, even good habit, may be excessive. It tends to become hide-bound and tyrannical. There is a pharisaical sticking to opinions once formed, and to customs once adopted, which is the principal obstacle to human progress. Yet, on the whole, there is no possession so valuable as a few good habits, for this means that not only is the mind pledged and covenanted to good, but the muscles are supple, and even the very bones are bent to what is good.
III. Desirable habits. I should be inclined to say that the most desirable habit which any young person can seek to have is self-control; that is the power of getting yourself to do what you know you ought to do, and to avoid what you know you ought to avoid. At first this habit would be exceedingly difficult to acquire, but there is an enormous exhilaration when a man can do the thing he knows he ought to do. It is moral strength that gives self-respect, and it will very soon win the respect of others. The second habit I would like to name is the habit of concentration of mind. I mean the power of withdrawing your thoughts from other subjects, and fixing them for long at a time on the subject in hand. I am sure many of you know how difficult that habit is to acquire. If you attempt to think on any particular subject, immediately you will think of other things; but by perseverance your mind will become your servant, and then you are on the way to being a thinker, for it is only to people who begin to think in this way that the secret and joy of truth unfold themselves. I mention, as the third desirable habit, that of working when you are at work. I do not care what your work is, whether work of brain or hand, whether well-paid or ill-paid; but what I say is, do it as well as it can be done for its own sake, and for your own sake. Do it so that you can be proud of it. There is one other habit that I should like to mention that is very desirable, and that is prayer. Happy is that man who at some hour or hours every day–the time which he finds to be most suitable for himself–goes down on his knees before his Maker. I say happy is that man, for his heavenly Father who seeth in secret will reward him openly.
IV. The tyranny of evil habit. Evil habits may be acquired through simply neglecting to acquire good ones. Like weeds, they grow up wherever the field is uncultivated and the good seed is not sown. For example, the man who does not work becomes a dissipated loafer. The young man who does not keep up the habit of going to church loses spiritual instinct–the instinct for worship, for fellowship, for religious work, and becomes a prey to sloth on the Sabbath. The tyranny of evil habit is proverbial. The moralists compare it to a thread at the beginning, but as thread is twisted with thread, it becomes like a cable which can turn a ship. Or they compare it to a tree, which to begin with is only a twig which you can bend any way, but when the tree is fully grown, who can bend it? And apart altogether from such illustrations, it is appalling how little even the most strong and obvious motives can turn aside the course of habit. This truth is terribly expressed in our text: Can the Ethiopian, etc. I suppose we all have contracted evil habits of some kind, and therefore for all of us it is an important question, Can these be unlearned and undone?
V. How to break bad habits. Moralists give rules for undoing evil habits. Here are some of them.
1. Launch yourself on the new course with as strong an initiative as possible. I suppose he means, do not try to taper your evil habit off, but break it off at once. Give it no quarter; and pledge yourself in some way; make some public profession.
2. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is rooted in your life.
3. Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of habits you aspire to gain.
4. Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. This writer strongly recommends that every one who seeks moral strength should every day do something he does not want to do, just to prove to himself he has the power of doing it. He would not mind very much whether it was an important thing or not, but he would say, Every day do something deliberately that you do not want to do, just that you may get power over yourself–the power of getting yourself to do anything you want.
5. I do not disparage rules like these. We have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, but the other half of that maxim is equally true, It is God that worketh in you both to win and to do His good pleasure. (James Stalker, D. D.)
Habit
1. To form a vicious habit is one of the easiest processes in nature. Man comes into a world where sin is, in many of its various forms, originally pleasant, and where evil propensities may be gratified at small expense. Nothing is required but to leave man to what is called the state of nature, to make him the slave of habitual sensuality. But even after the mind is, in some degree, fortified by education, and reason has acquired a degree of force, the ease with which a bad habit can be acquired is not less to be lamented. Vice gains its power by insinuation. It winds gently round the soul, without being felt, till its twines become so numerous, that the sinner, like the wretched Laocoon, writhes in vain to extricate himself, and his faculties are crushed at length in the folds of the serpent. Vice is prolific. It is no solitary invader. Admit one of its train, and it immediately introduces, with an irresistible air of insinuation, the multitude of its fellows, who promise you liberty, but whose service is corruption, and whose wages is death.
2. The effects of sinful indulgence, which make its relinquishment so difficult, are, that it perverts the moral discernment, benumbs the sensibility of conscience, destroys the sentiment of shame, and separates the sinner from the means and opportunities of conversion. The moral discernment is perverted. As the taste can be reconciled to the most nauseous and unpleasant impressions, the eye familiarised to a deformed object, the ear, to the most grating and discordant noises, and the feeling, to the most rough and irritating garment, so the moral taste becomes insensible to the loathsomeness of vice. Another effect of habitual transgression is, to banish the sentiment of shame. It is the tendency of habit to make a man regardless of observation, and at length of censure. He soon imagines that others see nothing offensive in what no longer offends himself. Besides, a vicious man easily gathers round him a circle of his own. It is the society of numbers which gives hardihood to iniquity, when the sophistry of the united ingenuity of others comes in aid of our own, and when, in the presence of the shameless and unblushing, the young offender is ashamed to blush. The last effect of vicious habits, by which the reformation of the sinner is rendered almost desperate, is, to separate him from the means of grace. He, who indulges himself in any passion, lust, or custom which openly or secretly offends against the laws of God or man, will find an insuperable reluctance to those places, persons, or principles by which he is necessarily condemned. One means of recovery yet remains, the reproof and example of the good. But who will long bear the presence of another, whose very looks reprove him, whose words harrow up his conscience, and whose whole life is a severe, though silent, admonition?
3. Do you ask when education should commence? Believe me, it has begun. It began with the first idea they received–the insensible education of circumstances and example. While you are waiting for their understandings to gain strength, vice, folly, and pleasure have not waited your dilatory motions. While you are looking out for masters and mistresses, the young immortals are under the tuition of innumerable instructors. Passion has been exciting, and idleness relaxing them, appetite tempting, and pleasure rewarding them, and example, example has long since entered them into her motley school. Already have they learned much, which will never be forgotten: the alphabet of vice is easily remembered. Is it not time to examine, whether there be not in you some vicious habit, which, notwithstanding your caution, frequently presents itself to their greedy observation, thus recommended by all the weight of parental authority? But, though the doctrine of the early operation of habit be full of admonitions, it presents consequences, also, full of consolation and pleasure. God hath set the evil and the good, one over against the other; and all His general laws are adapted to produce effects ultimately beneficial. If the love of sensual pleasure become inveterate by indulgence, the pure love of truth and goodness, also, may, by early instillation and careful example, become so natural and constant, that a violation of integrity, and offence against gratitude, a breach of purity or of reverence toward God, may prove as painful as a wound. (J. S. Buckminster.)
The force of habit
I. The nature of our habits generally. As we become accustomed to the performance of any action, we have a proneness to repeat it on like occasions, the ideas connected with it being always at hand to lead us on and direct us; so that it requires a particular effort to forbear it, but to do it demands often no conscious act of the will at all. Habits of body are produced by repeated external acts, as agility, gracefulness, dexterity in the mechanical arts. Habits of mind are formed by the repeated exertion of the intellectual faculties, or the inward practical principles. To the class of mental habits belong the moral virtues, as obedience, charity, patience, industry, submission to law, self-government, the love of truth. The inward practical principles of these qualities, being repeatedly called into exertion, and acted upon, become habits of virtue: just as, on the other hand, envy, malice, pride, revenge, the love of money, the love of the world, when carried into act, gradually form habits of vice. Habit is in its own nature therefore indifferent to vice or virtue. If man had continued in his original righteousness, it would have been, what the merciful Creator designed it to be, a source of unspeakable moral strength and improvement. Every step in virtue would have secured further advances. To what point man might at length have reached by the effect of use and experience thus acting on faculties made for enlargement, it is impossible to say, and it is vain to inquire. For we are lost creatures. We are prone to commit sin, and every act of it only disposes us to renewed transgressions. The force of these evil habits lies much in the gradual and almost imperceptible manner in which they are acquired. No man becomes reprobate at once. The sinner at first has difficulties. Shame, conscience, education, motives of religion, example, the unreasonableness of vice, the immediate evil consequences of it in various ways, Gods judgments on sinners, alarming events in His providence, the admonitions of friends and the warnings of ministers, are all barriers to the inundation. But habits, insensibly formed, sap the embankment. The powerful current works its way, and all opposing hindrances are carried before it. It is, indeed, true, that habit, in many cases, diminishes the enjoyment derived from sin. The sense of vicious pleasure is palled by indulgence. But, unhappily, the same indulgence which lessens the pleasure increases the vicious propensity. A course of debauchery, for example, deadens the sense of pleasure, but increases the desire of gratification. The passive principle is in some degree worn away, but the active principle is invigorated. Drunkenness, again, destroys the sensibility of the palate, but strengthens the habit of intemperance. A continued course of impiety and profaneness lessens the lamentable pleasure which the scoffer originally felt in insulting religion, but confirms him in the practical rebellion against its laws. A continued course of worldliness and irreligion takes off from the zest and relish of worldly pursuits, but augments the difficulty of renouncing them. They are become joyless; but are still followed from a sort of sad necessity.
II. The consequences arising from corrupt habits, in our fallen state. Any one transgression, if habitual, excludes from the kingdom of heaven, and every transgression is in the way of speedily becoming so: here lies the danger. Look at yonder criminal, whose hands have violated the property, and perhaps been imbrued in the life, of his fellow creature. His conscience is seared as with a hot iron. Is he ashamed when he commits abomination? Nay, he is not at all ashamed, neither can he blush. What has brought him hither? What has transformed the meek and decent and reputable youth into the fierce and vindictive ruffian? Evil habits. He began with breaking the Sabbath; this led to wicked company; drunkenness followed, and brought every other sin in its train–lust, passion, malice, desperation, cruelty, bloodshed. The road, dreadful as it seems to us, was easy to him. One bad habit prepared for the following. But my design is, not to dwell on a picture too shocking for a calm consideration; but to point out the danger of the same principle in cases by far more common and less suspected; and where the fatal effects of sinful customs in hardening the heart against the calls of grace and duty are less conspicuous perhaps at first sight, but not less fatal to the conversion and salvation of the soul. For what can account for that sober and measured system of sensual indulgence in which the great mass of mankind live, but habit working on the fallen state of mind? How is it that an immortal creature, gifted with reason and destined for heaven, can go insecure, in gratifying, all those earthly passions, which he once well knew to be inconsistent with a state of grace; but which he now pursues, forgetful of God and religion? What has made him morally insensible to the obligations of holiness, purity, and the love of God? The habit to which he has resigned himself. The effect has not been brought about at once. The desire for indolent and sensual gratification has increased with indulgence. Every day his resolutions for serving God have become weaker, and his practical subjugation to an earthly life has been confirmed. He has lost almost all notions of spiritual religion and self-government. He moves mechanically. He has little actual relish even for his most favourite pleasures; but they are necessary to him. He is the slave of the animal part of his frame. He vegetates rather than lives. Habit has become a second nature. If we turn from this description of persons, and view the force of habit in multitudes of those who are engaged in the affairs of trade and commerce, or in the prosecution of respectable professions, we need only ask what can account for the practical object of their lives? Why are nefarious or doubtful practices so frequently countenanced? Why are precarious speculations so eagerly embraced? Why are the aggrandisement of a family, the amassing of riches, the gratification of ambition, so openly pursued? And how does it arrive that this sort of spirit pervades so many thousands around us? It is their habit. It is the force of custom and the influence of the circle in which they move. They came by degrees within the magic charm, and are now fixed and bound to earth and its concerns. Again, notice for a moment the intellectual habits of many of the scholars and philosophers of our age. The world by wisdom knows not God. The pride of our corrupted hearts readily forms the properly intellectual or reasoning part of our nature to habits, as ensnaring and as fatal, as any which have their seat more directly in the bodily appetites. If once the inquisitive student resigns himself to a daring curiosity, applies to the simple and majestic truth of revelation the sort of argumentation which may safely be employed in natural inquiries, he is in imminent peril of scepticism and unbelief. The mind comes within a dangerous influence. A young and superficial reader once fixed in a habit of this sort, comes at last either tacitly to explain away the fundamental doctrines of the Holy Trinity, of the Fall, of human corruption, of redemption, and the work of the Holy Ghost, or openly to sacrifice them to the madness of infidelity, or to the scarcely less pernicious errors of the Socinian heresy. And whence is all this? Habit, working on a corrupt nature, has produced it, confirmed it, riveted it. Habit is as fruitful and as fatal a cause of intellectual disorder as of merely animal or sensual depravation. What, again, seduces the mere external worshipper of God to withhold from his Maker him heart, whilst he insults Him with a lifeless service of the lips? What, but the surprising and unsuspected influence of evil habit? He knows that the Almighty sees everything. He cannot but acknowledge that outward ceremonies, if destitute of fervent and humble devotion, are nothing less than a mockery of God, and abominable in His sight. And yet he proceeds in a heartless round of religious duties,–a mere lifeless shadow of piety. This he has so long allowed himself to offer to the Almighty, that at last his mind is unconscious of the impiety of which he is guilty. A habit of formality and ceremonial observance, with a practical, and perhaps at length an avowed, opposition to the grace of true religion as converting and sanctifying the whole soul, has darkened even his judgment. Nor can I forbear to add that the general indifference to practical religion, which prevails in our age, may be traced back in a great measure to the same cause. Men are so accustomed to put off the concerns of their salvation, and to disregard really spiritual religion, that they at length learn to draw a regular and well-defined line between merely decent and reputable persons, and those who lead a seriously religious life; and to proscribe the latter as extravagant and hypocritical.
III. The extent and magnitude of that conversion to God which is therefore necessary. A state of sin and a state of holiness are not like two ways running parallel by each other, and just parted by a line, so that a man may step out of the one into the other; but like two diverging roads to totally opposite places, which recede from each other as they go on, and lead the respective travellers farther and farther apart every step. What, then, is to bring man back to God? What to break the force of custom? What is to stop him in his rushing down the precipice? What to awaken him in his profound lethargy? What to be the starting post of a new race? What the principle of a new life? What the motive, the master motive, of a thorough and radical moral alteration? There never was, there never can be, any other effectual method proposed for these high purposes but that which the Scriptures reveal, an entire conversion of the whole soul to God by the mighty operation of the Holy Spirit. God alone that created the heart can renew it after His image. When the soul receives this new and holy bias, then the evil habits in which men formerly lived will resolutely be relinquished, and other and better habits will succeed. They will then repent of sin and separate from it. They will watch and pray against temptation. They will believe in the inestimable promises of life in Jesus Christ, trusting alone in His merits, and renouncing their imagined righteousness which was of the law. They will depend exclusively on the graces and influences of the Holy Spirit for every good thought and every holy action. Thus they will stop at once in the course of their former habits, and begin to form new ones. They will now enter on a life of humility and fear, of conscientiousness and circumspection, of mortification and purity, of meekness and temperance, of justice and charity; all springing from faith in the atonement of Christ, and from a genuine love to His name. (D. Wilson, M. A.)
On vicious habits
I. There is in human nature so unhappy an inclination and propensity to sin, that attention and vigilance are always requisite to oppose this inclination, and maintain our integrity. The power and influence of habit is the subject of daily observation. Even in matters merely mechanical, where no attention of mind is required, custom and practice give, we know, an expertness and facility not otherwise to be acquired. The case is the same, however unaccountable, in the operations of the mind. Actions frequently repeated form habits; and habits approach near to natural propensions. But if such be the influence of habits in general, vicious ones are still more peculiarly powerful. If the power of custom be on all occasions apt to prevail, we shall have still less inclination to oppose it where the object to which we accustom ourselves is naturally agreeable and suited to our corruption. Here all the resolution we can summon to our assistance will be requisite, and perhaps ineffectual. We may form an idea of the unhappy situation of an habitual offender from the difficulty we find in conquering even an indifferent custom. What was at first optional and voluntary, becomes by degrees in a manner necessary and almost unavoidable. And yet, besides the natural force of custom and habit, other considerations there are, which add to the difficulty of reforming vicious manners. By vicious habits we impair the understanding, and our perception of the moral distinction of actions becomes less clear and distinct. Smaller offences, under the plausible pretext of being such, gain the first admittance to the heart: and he who has been induced to comply with one sin, because it is a small one, will be tempted to a second, from the consideration that it is not much worse. And the same plea will lead him on gradually to another, and another, of still greater magnitude. Every new sin is committed with less reluctance than the former; and he endeavours to find out reasons, such as they are, to justify and vindicate what he is determined to persist in, and to practise: and thus, by habits of sinning, we cloud the understanding, and render it in a manner incapable of distinguishing moral good and evil. But further: As, by long practice and perseverance in sin, we lose or impair the moral discernment and feeling of the mind; so, by the same means, we provoke the Almighty to withdraw His assisting grace, long bestowed in vain.
II. Yet, notwithstanding this difficulty and danger, the sinner may have it in his power to return to duty, and reconcile himself to God. When once the sinner feels his guilt,–feels just impressions of his own disobedience, and of the consequent displeasure and resentment of heaven; if he is serious in his resolutions to restore himself by repentance to the favour of his offended God; God, who is ever ready to meet and receive the returning penitent, will assist his resolution with such a portion of His grace, as may be sufficient, if not totally, at once to extirpate vicious habits, yet gradually to produce a disposition to virtue; so that, if not wanting to himself, he shall not fail to become superior to the power of inveterate habits. In this case, indeed, no endeavours on his part ought to be neglected,–no attempts left unessayed, to recommend himself to the throne of mercy. Never, therefore, think of postponing the care of your salvation to the day of old age; never think of treasuring up to yourselves difficulties, sorrows, repentance, and remorse, against an age, the disorders and infirmities of which are themselves so hard to be sustained. Let not these be the comforts reserved for that period of life which stands most in need of consolation. What confusion must cover the self-convicted sinner, grown old in iniquity! How reluctant to attempt a task to which he has always been unequal; and to travel a difficult road, which opens to him, indeed, happier prospects, but has hitherto been found impracticable! But if any of us have unhappily lost this first, best season of devoting ourselves to God,–and have reserved nothing but shame, sorrow, and remorse, for the entertainment of riper years;–let the review of former transgressions be an incitement to immediate repentance. (G. Carr.)
The power of evil habits
I. The power of sin, as inherent in our nature.
1. It pervades all our faculties, whether of mind or body.
2. It finds in us nothing to counteract its influence.
3. It receives aid from everything around us.
4. It conceals its influence under specious names. Amusement, conviviality, good breeding, etc.
II. Its power, as confirmed and augmented by evil habit.
1. Its odiousness is diminished.
2. Its power is strengthened.
3. Its opportunities for exercise are multiplied.
4. The powers whereby it should be resisted are destroyed.
5. Everything good is by it put at an unapproachable distance. (C. Simeon, M. A.)
The force of habit
It is, as Mr. Darwin says, notorious how powerful is the force of habit. The most complex and difficult movements can in time be performed without the least effort or consciousness. It is not positively known how it comes that habit is so efficient in facilitating complex movements; but physiologists admit that the conducting power of the nervous fibres increases with the frequency of their excitement. This applies to the nerves of motion and sensation as well as to those connected with the act of thinking. That some physical change is produced in the nerve cells or nerves which are habitually used can hardly be doubted, for otherwise it is impossible to understand how the tendency to certain acquired movements is inherited. That they are inherited we see with horses in certain transmitted paces, such as cantering and ambling, which are not natural to them; in the pointing of young pointers and the setting of young setters; in the peculiar manner of flight of certain breeds of the pigeon, etc. We have analogous cases with mankind in the inheritance of tricks or unusual gestures. As to the domination which evil habit acquires over men, that needs not even a passing allusion. It is remarkable that the force of habit may affect even caterpillars. Caterpillars which have been fed on the leaves of one kind of tree have been known to perish from hunger rather than to eat the leaves of another tree, although this afforded them their proper food under a state of nature. Their conduct might suggest reflection to men who are tempted by habit to risk death by adherence to debauched courses rather than return to a natural mode of living. (Scientific Illustrations and Symbols.)
Effects of habit
While shaking hands with an old man the other day we noticed that some of his fingers were quite bent inward, and he had not the power of straightening them. Alluding to this fact, he said, In these crooked fingers there is a good text. For over fifty years I used to drive a stage, and these bent fingers show the effect of holding the reins for so many years.
How habits are formed
A writer describing a stalactite cave says, Standing perfectly still in the cavernous hall I could hear the intense silence broken by first one drop of water and then another, say one drop in each half minute. The huge rock had been formed by the infinitesimal deposit of lime from these drops–deducting the amount washed away by the same water–for the drops were not only building, they were wasting at the same time. The increase was so minute that a years growth could hardly be estimated. It is a powerful illustration of minute influences. A man might stand before it and say, It is thus my habits have all been formed. My strong points and my weaknesses all come from influences as quiet, minute, and generally as secret as these water drops.
No substitute for spiritual renewal
No earthly change whatever can be a substitute for the change which comes from above; any more than the lights of earth will suffice for the sun, moon, and stars; any more than all the possible changes through which a potter may pass a piece of clay can convert it into the bright, pure, stamped, golden coin of the realm. (J. Bates.)
Moral suasion cannot renew the soul
All mere outward declarations are but suasions, and mere suasions cannot change and cure a disease or habit in nature. You may exhort an Ethiopian to turn himself white, or a lame man to go; but the most pathetic exhortations cannot procure such an effect without a greater power than that of the tongue to cure nature; you may as well think to raise a dead man by blowing in his mouth with a pair of bellows. (S. Charnock.)
Washing an Ethiopian
Then the shepherds led the pilgrims to a place where they saw one Fool and one Want-wit washing an Ethiopian, with an intention to make him white; but the more they washed him the blacker he was. Then they asked the shepherds what this should mean. So they told them saying, Thus it is with the vile person: all means used to get such a one a good name, shall in conclusion tend but to make him more abominable. Thus it was with the Pharisees; and so it shall be with all hypocrites. (J. Bunyan.)
A change of heart should be immediately sought after
The longer you stay, the more leisure you give the devil to assault you, and to try one way when he cannot prevail by another, and to strengthen his temptations: like a foolish soldier who will stand still to be shot at, rather than assault the enemy. And the longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree? If you cannot pluck up a tender plant, are you more likely to pluck up a sturdy oak? Custom gives strength and root to vices. A blackamoor may as well change his skin, or a leopard his spots, as these who are accustomed to do evil can learn to do well. (R. Baxter.)
The Divine and human element in conversion
There is produced in a telescope an image of a star. There is produced in the soul an image of God. When does the image of the star start up in the chamber of the telescope? Only when the lenses are clear and rightly adjusted, and when the axis of vision in the tube is brought into exact coincidence with the line of the rays of light from the star. When does the image of God, or the inner sense of peace and pardon, spring up in the human soul? Only when the faculties of the soul are rightly adjusted in relation to each other, and the will brought into coincidence with Gods will. How much is mans work, and how much is the work of the light? Man adjusts the lenses and the tube; the light does the rest. Man may, in the exercise of his freedom, as upheld by Divine power, adjust his faculties to spiritual light, and when adjusted in a certain way God flashes through them. (Joseph Cook.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin] Can a black, at his own pleasure, change the colour of his skin? Can the leopard at will change the variety of his spots? These things are natural to them, and they cannot be altered; so sin, and especially your attachment to idolatry, is become a second nature; and we may as well expect the Ethiopian to change his skin, and the leopard his spots, as you to do good, who have been accustomed to do evil. It is a matter of the utmost difficulty to get a sinner, deeply rooted in vicious habits, brought to the knowledge of himself and God. But the expression does not imply that the thing is as impossible in a moral as it is in a natural sense: it only shows that it is extremely difficult, and not to be often expected; and a thousand matters of fact prove the truth of this. But still, what is impossible to man is possible to God. See Clarke on Jer 13:27.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
In the Hebrew it is,
Can the Cushite, & c.? from whence it is well concluded, as learned men judge, that the Ethiopians are of the posterity of Cush the son of Ham, brother to Mizraim, the father of the Egyptians, Gen 10:6. For these were the only people of old noted for their black colour in Scripture, as the Ethiopians are now. God showeth that the Jews by their continued customary sinning had so inured themselves to wicked practices, that it was as much labour in vain to endeavour to reclaim them, as to go about to wash a blackamoor, or to take out the natural spots of the beasts called leopards.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
23. Ethiopianthe Cushite ofAbyssinia. Habit is second nature; as therefore it is morallyimpossible that the Jews can alter their inveterate habits of sin,nothing remains but the infliction of the extremest punishment, theirexpatriation (Jer 13:24).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Can the Ethiopian change his skin?…. Or, “the Cushite”; either, as the Arabic version, the “Abyssine”, the inhabitant of the eastern Ethiopia; properly an Ethiopian, as the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it; or, the “Chusean Arabian”; the inhabitant of Arabia Chusea, which was nearer Judea than the other Ethiopia, and better known, and which were of a dark complexion. The Targum renders it, the Indian; and so does the Syriac version. In the Misna i mention is made of Indian garments, with which the high priest was clothed on the day of atonement; upon which the gloss k is, that they were of linen of the country of India; and which is the land of Cush (or Ethiopia), as Jonathan Ben Uzziel interprets Jer 13:23
“can the Cushite, the Indian, change his skin?”
and it is highly probable, that, in the time of Jeremiah, no other India was known by the Jews but Ethiopia, or Arabia Chusea, and no other black people but the inhabitants thereof, or any other than the Arabians; and, as Braunius l observes, it need not be wondered at, that with the Jews, in those times, Ethiopia and India should be reckoned the same country; when with the ancients, whatever was beyond the Mediterranean sea, as Arabia, Ethiopia, and even Judea itself, was called India; so Joppa, a city of Phoenicia, from whence Andromeda was fetched by Perseus, is by Ovid m said to be in India; so Bochart n interprets the words of the Saracens or Arabians, who are of a swarthy colour, and some black; and indeed have their name from the same word the raven has, which is black; and particularly the inhabitants of Kedar were black, one part of Arabia, to which the allusion is in So 1:5. Jarchi interprets the word here by “the moor”, the blackamoor, whose skin is naturally black, and cannot be changed by himself or others; hence to wash the blackamoor white is a proverbial expression for labour in vain, or attempting to do that which is not to be done:
or the leopard his spots? a creature full of spots, and whose spots are natural to it; and therefore cannot be removed by any means. Some think a creature called “the ounce”, or “cat-a-mountain” is meant, whose spots are many, and of a blackish colour; but the description well agrees with the leopard, which is a creature full of spots, and has its name in the eastern languages, particularly the Chaldee and Arabic, from a word o which signifies “spotted”, “variegated”, as this creature is; so the female is called “varia” by Pliny p, because, of its various spots; and these spots are black, as the Arabic writers in Bochart q. The word here used signifies such marks as are made in a body beat and bruised, which we call black and blue; hence some render it “livid”, or black and blue spots r; and these marks are in the skin and hair of this creature, and are natural to it, and cannot be changed; and it is usual with other writers s to call them spots, as well as the Scripture:
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil; signifying that they were naturally sinners, as blackness is natural to the Ethiopian, and spots to the leopard; and were from their birth and infancy such, and had been so long habituated to sin, by custom founded upon nature, that there was no hope of them; they were obstinate in sin, bent upon it, and incorrigible in it; and this is another reason given why the above calamities came upon them. The metaphors used in this text fitly express the state and condition of men by nature; they are like the Ethiopian or blackamoor; very black, both with original and actual sin; very guilty, and very uncomely; and their blackness is natural to them; they have it from their parents, and by birth; it is with them from their infancy, and youth upwards; and very hard and difficult to be removed; it cannot be washed off by ceremonial ablutions, moral duties, evangelical ordinances, or outward humiliations; yea, it is impossible to be removed but by the grace of God and blood of Christ. Their sins are aptly compared to the leopard’s spots, which are many and natural, and difficult to get clear off. What is figuratively expressed in the above metaphors is more plainly signified by being “accustomed” or “taught to do evil” t; which denotes a series and course of sinning; a settled habit and custom in it, founded on nature, and arising from it; which a man learns and acquires naturally, and of himself, whereby he becomes void of fear and shame; and there is a good deal of difficulty, and indeed a moral impossibility, that such persons should “do good”: nothing short of the powerful and efficacious grace of God can put a man into a state and capacity of doing good aright, from right principles to right ends, and of continuing in it; for there is no good in such men; nor have they any true notion of doing good, nor inclination to it, nor any ability to perform it: in order to it, it is absolutely necessary that they should first be made good men by the grace of God; that they should be regenerated and quickened by the Spirit of God; that they should be created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and have faith in him; all which is by the grace of God, and not of themselves.
i Yoma, c. 3. sect 7. k In T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 34. 2. l De Vestitu Sacerdot. Heb. l. 1. c. 7. sect. 9. p. 150, 151. m “Andromedam Perseus nigris portarat ab Indis”. De Arte Atnandi, l. 1. n Phaleg. l. 4. c. 2. col. 215, 216. o Vid. Golium, col. 2459, 2460. Castel. col. 2321, 2322. p Nat. Hist. l. 8. c. 17. q Hierozoic. par 1. l. 3. c. 7. col. 786, 787. r “liventee maculas suas”, Junius Tremellius. s Vid. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 8. c. 19. Juvenal. Satyr. 15. t “docti malefacere”, Montanus “edocti malefacere”, Junius Tremellius, Piscator “qui edocti estis malum”, Schmidt.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Judah will not escape this ignominious lot, since wickedness has so grown to be its nature, that it can as little cease therefrom and do good, as an Ethiopian can wash out the blackness of his skin, or a panther change it spots. The consequential clause introduced by connects with the possibility suggested in, but denied by, the preceding question: if that could happen, then might even ye do good. The one thing is as impossible as the other. And so the Lord must scatter Judah among the heathen, like stubble swept away by the desert wind, lit., passing by with the desert wind. The desert wind is the strong east wind that blows from the Arabian Desert; see on Jer 4:11.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
God declares in this verse, that the people were so hardened in their wickedness, that there was no hope of their repentance. This is the sum of what is said. But it was a very bitter reproof for the Prophet to say that his own nation were past hope — that they had so entirely given themselves up to their vices that they were no longer healable.
But he uses a comparison, — Can the Ethiopian, (94) he says, change his skin? Blackness is inherent in the skin of the Ethiopians, as it is well known. Were they then to wash themselves a hundred times daily, they could not put off their blackness. The same also must be said of leopards or panthers, and we know that these animals are besprinkled with spots. Such then is the spotted character of the leopard or panther, (95) that whatever might be done to him he would still retain his color. We now then see what the Prophet means — that the Jews were so corrupted by long habit that they could not repent, for the devil had so enslaved them that they were not in their right mind; they no longer had any discernment, and could not discriminate between good and evil.
Learned men in our age do not wisely refer to this passage, when they seek to prove that there is no free-will in man; for it is not simply the nature of man that is spoken of here, but the habit that is contracted by long practice. Aristotle, a strong advocate of free will, confesses that it is not in man’s power to do right, when he is so immersed in his own vices as to have lost a free choice, ( 7. Lib. Ethicon) and this also is what experience proves. We hence see that this passage is improperly adduced to prove a sentiment which is yet true, and fully confirmed by many passages of Scripture.
Jeremiah, then, does not here refer to man’s nature as he is when he comes from the womb; but he condemns the Jews for contracting such a habit by long practice. As, then, they had hardened themselves in doing evil, he says that they could not repent, that wickedness had become inherent, or firmly fixed in their hearts, like the blackness which is inherent in the skin of the Ethiopians, or the spots which belong to the leopards or panthers.
We may at the same time gather from this passage a useful doctrine — that men become so corrupt, by sinful habits and sinful indulgence, that the devil takes away from them every desire and care for acting rightly, so that, in a word, they become wholly irreclaimable, as we see to be the case with regard to bodily diseases; for a chronic disease, in most instances, so corrupts what is sound and healthy in the body, that it becomes by degrees incurable. When, therefore, the body is thus infected for a long time, there is no hope of a cure Life may indeed be prolonged, but not without continual languor. Now, as to spiritual diseases it is also true, that when putridity has pervaded the inward parts, it is impossible for any one to repent. And yet it must be observed, that we do not speak here of the power of God, but only shew, that all those who harden themselves in their vices, as far as their power is concerned, are incurable, and past all remedy. Yet God can deliver, even from the lowest depths, such as have a hundred times past all recovery. But here, as I have already said, the Prophet does not refer to God’s power, but only condemns his own nation, that they might not complain that God treated them with too much severity.
The meaning then is, that they ought not to have thought it strange that God left them no hope; for they became past recovery, through their own perverseness, as they could not adopt another course of life after having so long accustomed themselves to everything that was evil: Wilt thou also, he says, be able to do good? that is, wilt thou apply thy mind to what is just, who hast been accustomed to evil, or who hast hitherto learnt nothing but to do evil? (96) We now perceive the design of the Prophet — that they unreasonably sought pardon of God, who had contracted such hardness by a long course of sinning that they were become incurable. It afterwards follows —
(94) The word in Hebrew is “Cushite;” and many learned men contend that the “Ethiopian” is not meant, though all the early versions so render it except the Syriac, which has “Indian.” Blayney agrees with Bochart and others in thinking that the Cushites were the inhabitants of Arabia, on the borders of the Red Sea, and he refers in proof of this to 2Ch 21:16. The skin is not said here to be black, but it was no doubt of a particular color, different from that of the Jews. — Ed.
(95) ”Panther,” πάρδαλις — pardus, is the rendering of the Septuagint and the other versions. The word rendered “spots,” found only here, is translated “varieties” by the Septuagint and Vulgate, but “spots” by the Syriac and Targum. — Ed.
(96) Neither this sentence nor the preceding is put interrogatively in the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate, but in this way, — “If the Ethiopian,” etc.; “Even so can ye,” etc. The Arabic and the Targum have both sentences in an interrogative form, and more consistently with the Hebrew. Blayney renders the first part interrogatively, as in our version, but not the second, and he gives a meaning to the second part which the original will not bear, and which is not countenanced by any of the versions. The most literal version is as follows, —
Can the Cushite change his skin, Or the panther his spots? — Also ye, can ye do good, Who have learned evil?
The future tense in Hebrew ought often to be rendered potentially, and sometimes subjunctively. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(23) Can the Ethiopian . . .?Literally, the Cushite. The meaning of the question is obvious. The evil of Judah was too deep-ingrained to be capable of spontaneous reformation. There remained nothing but the sharp discipline of the exile. The invasion of Tirhakah and Pharaoh-nechoh, the presence of Ethiopians among the servants of the royal household (Jer. 38:10), the intercourse with the upper valley of the Nile implied in Zep. 3:10 and Psa. 68:31; Psa. 87:4, had made the swarthy forms of Africa familiar objects. Possibly the use of leopard-skins by Ethiopian princes and warriors, as seen on Egyptian monuments and described by Herodotus (vii. 69), had associated the two thoughts together in the prophets mind. If the kings household were present (as in Jer. 13:18), he may have pointed to such an one, Ebedmelech (Jer. 38:10), or another so arrayed, in illustration of his words.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
23. The hopelessness of Judah’s case consists in the fact that her sin has become her nature. Her momentum in evil is practically resistless. But with God all things are possible.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 13:23. Can the Ethiopian, &c. Jeremiah does not mean hereby to express the absolute impossibility of a moral change; such as that in nature, whereof he speaks. To suppose this, would be to contradict the whole tenor of his writings, and to render insignificant and absurd all his invitations to repentance. Nay, it appears from the last verse of this very chapter, that he did not suppose the reformation of this people an absolute impossibility. We are, therefore, to understand this as a proverbial expression, which, like many others in Scripture, is not to be taken in the strictness of the letter; the prophet designing only to express the extreme difficulty of a moral change in habitual sinners, and particularly in these presumptuous and obstinate sinners of Israel, to whom his discourse is directed. Archbishop Tillotson remarks, “That this expression, Can the Ethiopian, &c. is much to be mitigated, will appear, by considering some other like passages of Scripture; as where our Saviour compares the difficulty of a rich man’s salvation, to that which is naturally impossible,to a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle: nay, he pitches his expression higher, and doth not only make it a thing of equal, but of greater difficulty: I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And yet, when he comes to explain this to his disciples, he tells them, that he only meant that the thing was very difficult; How hard is it for those that have riches to be saved! And in another place,For those that trust in riches, and that it was not impossible: but, speaking according to human probability, with men this is impossible, but not with God. In like manner we are to understand this high expression, which is very hyperbolical,Can the Ethiopian, &. that is to say, This moral change of men, settled and fixed in bad habits, is very difficult, though, as the Archbishop goes on to shew, there is still ground to hope that it may be done. And when we consider the Christian religion, and the power of divine grace, there is all the reason in the world to believe that it will be done, when we heartily set about it, and use every necessary and proper endeavour. See his Sermons, vol. 2: p. 166.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 1049
THE POWER OF EVIL HABITS
Jer 13:23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
OF any particular acts which we have done amiss, we have been conscious: they have, as it were, obtruded themselves upon our notice, and we could not turn our eyes from them: but of an evil principle operating within us, we have been strangely insensible; though, if we had been at all observant of our daily habits, we could not but have both seen and felt it. It is owing to this that we have, for the most part, so high a conceit of our own sufficiency for what is good. We imagine that we have but to make a resolution, and any change which we propose will take place of course: but experience shews, that our habits of sin are not so easily broken, nor our resolutions respecting holiness so easily carried into effect. The truth is, that the Ethiopian may as soon change his skin, or the leopard his spots, as we, by any power of our own, get into a course of what is good, after having been so long and so habitually accustomed to do evil.
From the words before us, I will take occasion to point out,
I.
The power of sin, as inherent in our nature
No wonder that we are entirely led captive by it: for,
1.
It pervades all our faculties, whether of mind or body
[Our understanding is blinded by it; our will is rendered perverse; our affections are made earthly and sensual; our conscience is stupefied; and our very memory is enfeebled with respect to every thing truly good. By it, also, is the whole of our body defiled. St. Paul, with a remarkable particularity, specifies the subjection of our several members to this evil principle, from head to foot [Note: Rom 3:12-15.]: so that what the prophet speaks of the Jewish people, may well be said of us: From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in us; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores [Note: Isa 1:6.]. The whole man is corrupt; insomuch that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually [Note: Gen 6:5.]; and all our members are instruments of unrighteousness unto sin [Note: Rom 6:13.].]
2.
It finds in us nothing to counteract its influence
[True indeed, man, in his fallen state, possesses both reason and conscience: but neither of these perform their office, in opposing the evil principle within us, any farther than to testify against such flagrant acts as may expose us to shame before men, I deny not, but that there are at times some secret stirrings in the mind, even at a very early period of life; some remonstrances against sin; and some intimations that we ought to serve our God, But these arise not from any remnant of good in our fallen nature: they are the fruits of divine grace, produced by the operation of the Spirit of God upon the soul; even of that blessed Spirit who wrought on Samuel, and John, and Timothy, from the very womb. The Scripture says expressly, that in us, that is, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing [Note: Rom 7:18.]: we cannot so much as will what is good, and much less do it, unless God work within us to that end [Note: Php 2:13.]; nor have we a sufficiency even to think a good thought [Note: 2Co 3:5.], unless it be put into our hearts by the only Giver of all good. In reference to all spiritual exercises, reason and conscience are rather on the side of the corrupt principle; justifying, rather than condemning, the neglect of them; and substituting in their place such services as are altogether unworthy of Him who claims to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.]
3.
It receives aid from every thing around us
[All that is in the world is comprehended by the Apostle under these three designations; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life [Note: 1Jn 2:16.]. And what are these, but confederates of the evil principle within us, giving it continually fresh scope for exercise, and soliciting it in every possible way to enslave our souls? Every thing we see, every thing we hear, has a tendency to draw us from God, to gratify our corrupt nature, and to give to the evil principle within us an advantage against us to our destruction. Even the Saviour himself, whilst to Gods elect he is made a sanctuary, is, to those who are destitute of divine grace, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, yea, as a gin and a snare, whereby multitudes stumble and fall, and are broken and snared, and taken [Note: Isa 8:14-15, with 1Pe 2:7-8.].]
4.
It conceals its influence under specious names
[There is not an evil which the corrupt principle does not lead us to palliate by some gentle name, whilst on vital godliness it invariably casts reproach. What will it not commend to us, under the idea of innocent amusement? and what will it not sanction, under the terms conviviality and good breeding? Covetousness, worldliness, ambition, yes, and licentiousness itself, all lose their hateful qualities under the less offensive terms of prudence, and honour, and youthful indiscretion.
Is it any wonder, then, that men are led captive by sin and Satan, and that godliness is in so great a degree banished from the world?]
But, to get a just notion of this evil principle, we must yet further mark,
II.
Its power, as augmented and confirmed by evil habit
Habit is to us as a second nature: and by it, sin is greatly augmented and confirmed.
1.
Its odiousness is diminished
[I have already said, that there are certain acts of sin which, notwithstanding their general approbation of it, men are agreed to stigmatize as evil; and into these, men do not plunge themselves, without some checks of conscience, and some remorse after they have fallen into the commission of them. And, if a person were warned that he was in danger of abandoning himself to these, he would be ready to reply, Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing [Note: 2Ki 8:13.]? But we see to what lengths of wickedness men will proceed, when once these restraints are broken through; and how they will even come at last to glory in their shame [Note: Php 3:18-19.]. Who that walk the streets with shameless impudence, or that addict themselves to theft and robbery till they bring themselves to an untimely end, would ever have believed, that sin, which, when first committed, caused in them a blush of conscious guilt, should ever be carried by them to such a fearful extent, and be familiarized to them as their inseparable companion?]
2.
Its power is strengthened
[It is of the very nature of habit to strengthen the principle that is called into action, whether it be good or bad. The mind, the memory, the judgment, are strengthened by exercise; as the bodily organs are also: and they acquire a facility in doing things which at first are difficult. And thus it is also with evil habits: a man may have so accustomed himself to anger, intemperance, impurity, or sloth, that he shall not be able to withstand the smallest temptation: every trifle will irritate him; every opportunity of indulgence ensnare him; his eyes will be so full of adultery, that he cannot cease from sin [Note: 2Pe 2:14.]; and on his bed he shall become like a door upon its hinges, that knows of no motion but from one side to another [Note: Pro 26:14.]. This is placed in a peculiarly strong point of view by our blessed Lord, who tells us that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God [Note: Mat 19:24.]. And wherefore is this? It is because his habits of indulgence have so enslaved him, that he cannot overcome them; nor can any thing but Omnipotence itself effect his deliverance [Note: Mat 19:26.].]
3.
Its opportunities for exercise are multiplied
[Habit calls around us those persons and temptations that are most subservient to its indulgence. The man of pleasure moves in a round of gaiety and amusement. The man who is in the pursuit of wealth, is to be found, wherever his favourite object may be best accomplished. The man who affects pre-eminence and distinction, is ever prosecuting his plans by such methods as lie within his reach. Thus all put themselves in the very way of temptation, and of indulging the sin which most easily besets them. If they even fled from the occasions of sin, they would be in great danger: but when they accumulate to themselves occasions of falling, and lay continually stumbling-blocks in their own way, it is no wonder that they fall. For, can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burnt? or can he walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be burnt [Note: Pro 6:27-28.]? So if, instead of watching against temptation, we court it, and rush into it, and familiarize ourselves with it, there can be no hope but that we shall fall and perish. A bird hasting to the snare, is not more sure of ruin than we [Note: Pro 7:22-23.].]
4.
The powers whereby it should be resisted are destroyed
[We have before said, that against enormous wickedness there are some barriers, arising from conscience, and a desire of mans applause. But by habits of sin, the conscience becomes seared as with a hot iron, and is rendered altogether incapable of discharging its proper office [Note: 1Ti 4:2.]. A fear of detection, or of Gods displeasure, may sometimes operate to restrain from great iniquity: but the mind may become altogether hardened through the deceitfulness of sin [Note: Heb 3:13.], till we resemble those of whom the prophet speaks in a preceding chapter: Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock: they have refused to return [Note: Jer 5:3.]. What can be expected of such persons, but that they will wax worse and worse [Note: 2Ti 3:13.], and continue treasuring up wrath, till it shall come upon them to the uttermost?]
5.
Every thing that is good is put, by it, at an unapproachable distance
[How shall they do good that have been accustomed to do evil? If the putting off the old man be so difficult, what hope is there of such persons putting on the new [Note: Eph 4:22-24.]? The loving, serving, honouring of God, are things which come not into the mind of one who is addicted to the commission of evil: in this sense, God is not in all his thoughts [Note: Psa 10:4.]. And if any man think that of himself he can turn unto the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and truth, let him first wash an Ethiopian white; and then he may hope to accomplish the task of converting his own soul, and of creating himself anew after the Divine image, in righteousness and true holiness.]
Learn then, beloved,
1.
Your need of converting grace
[You need it for the subjugation of sin, and much more for the implantation of holiness in your souls. Yes, indeed, Brethren, you must be born again, and be made new creatures in Christ Jesus. No power, but that which formed the universe at first, can ever make you what you ought to be; and what you must be, if over you would behold the face of God in peace ]
2.
The difference between sin and grace, as affected by our habits
[You have seen the terrible effect of habit in relation to sin. But it is far different in relation to grace: for though it is true that gracious habits render the exercise of grace more easy, they will never, in any degree, supersede the need of fear and watchfulness. Behold David, the man after Gods own heart: he catches but a glimpse of Bathsheba, and what becomes of all his gracious affections? See Peter, also, who was so bold that he would die with his Divine Master: a maiden does but point him out as a follower of his Lord, and he denies him with oaths and curses. The truth is, that habits of sin increase the corrupt bias that is in the soul, and render its departure from a right line more easy and more certain than it was before: but habits of grace are only like an augmenting of a mans power to roll a stone up hill: but if he intermit his labour, whatever advance he may have made, the stone will instantly roll down, and he will have all his labour to begin again. Let him, then, that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall [Note: 1Co 10:12.]. Still has the most eminent amongst us the flesh lusting against the Spirit, as well as the Spirit lusting against the flesh [Note: Gal 5:17.]. Yes, and still has the corrupt principle within him the force of a law, which wars against the law of his mind, and brings him more or less into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members [Note: Rom 7:23.]. And this I say to humble you, and to put you on your guard. Yet, let not any of you be discouraged: for the grace of Christ is amply sufficient for you, if you will but seek it; nor shall any temptation occur to you without a way to escape, that so you may be able to bear it [Note: 1Co 10:13.]. Be weak, then, in yourselves, and strong in the Lord [Note: Eph 6:10.]: so shall his strength be perfected in your weakness [Note: 2Co 12:9.], and his name be glorified in your salvation.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Jer 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? [then] may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
Ver. 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? ] Proverbial speeches arguing a very great difficulty, if not an utter impossibility, Aethiopem abluo ut candidum reddam, said Diogenes, when he reproved an ill man to no purpose; I do but wash a blackamore. And the like said Nazianzen concerning Julian the apostate. It is said that the negroes paint the devil white, as being a colour contrary to their own, and which they less well affect. Will the Ethiopian change his skin? so the Hebrew hath it.
Or the leopard his spots.
Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.
a Val. Max.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jeremiah
AN IMPOSSIBILITY MADE POSSIBLE
Jer 13:23
Put these three texts together. The first is a despairing question to which experience gives only too sad and decisive a negative answer. It is the answer of many people who tell us that character must be eternal, and of many a baffled man who says, ‘It is of no use-I have tried and can do nothing.’ The second text is the grand Christian answer, full of confidence. It was spoken by one who had no superficial estimate of the evil, but who had known in himself the power of Christ to revolutionise a life, and make a man love all he had hated, and hate all he had loved, and fling away all he had treasured. The last text predicts the completion of the renovating process lying far ahead, but as certain as sunrise.
I. The unchangeableness of character, especially of faults.
Now we do not need to assert that a man has no power of self-improvement or reformation. The exhortations of the prophet to repentance and to cleansing imply that he has. If he has not, then it is no blame to him that he does not mend. Experience shows that we have a very considerable power of such a kind. It is a pity that some Christian teachers speak in exaggerated terms about the impossibility of such self-improvement.
But it is very difficult.
Note the great antagonist as set forth here-Habit, that solemn and mystical power. We do not know all the ways in which it operates, but one chief way is through physical cravings set up. It is strange how much easier a second time is than a first, especially in regard to evil acts. The hedge once broken down, it is very easy to get through it again. If one drop of water has percolated through the dyke, there will be a roaring torrent soon. There is all the difference between once and never; there is small difference between once and twice. By habit we come to do things mechanically and without effort, and we all like that. One solitary footfall across the snow soon becomes a beaten way. As in the banyan-tree, each branch becomes a root. All life is held together by cords of custom which enable us to reserve conscious effort and intelligence for greater moments. Habit tends to weigh upon us with a pressure ‘heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.’ But also it is the ally of good.
The change to good is further made difficult because liking too often goes with evil, and good is only won by effort. It is a proof of man’s corruption that if left alone, evil in some form or other springs spontaneously, and that the opposite good is hard to win. Uncultivated soil bears thistles and weeds. Anything can roll downhill. It is always the least trouble to go on as we have been going.
Further, the change is made difficult because custom blinds judgment and conscience. People accustomed to a vitiated atmosphere are not aware of its foulness.
How long it takes a nation, for instance, to awake to consciousness of some national crime, even when the nation is ‘Christian’! And how men get perfectly sophisticated as to their own sins, and have all manner of euphemisms for them!
Further, how hard it is to put energy into a will that has been enfeebled by long compliance. Like prisoners brought out of the Bastille.
So if we put all these reasons together, no wonder that such reformation is rare.
I do not dwell on the point that it must necessarily be confined within very narrow limits. I appeal to experience. You have tried to cure some trivial habit. You know what a task that has been-how often you thought that you had conquered, and then found that all had to be done over again. How much more is this the case in this greater work! Often the efforts to break off evil habits have the same effect as the struggles of cattle mired in a bog, who sink the deeper for plunging. The sad cry of many a foiled wrestler with his own evil is, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ We do not wish to exaggerate, but simply to put it that experience shows that for men in general, custom and inclination and indolence and the lack of adequate motive weigh so heavily that a thorough abandonment of evil, much more a hearty practice of good, are not to be looked for when once a character has been formed. So you young people, take care. And all of us listen to-
II. The great hope for individual renewal.
‘If any man be in Christ he is a new creature,’ or as the words might be rendered, ‘there is a new creation,’ and not only is he renewed, but all things are become new. He is a new Adam in a new world.
Now a let us beware of exaggeration about this matter. There are often things said about the effects of conversion which are very far in advance of reality, and give a handle to caricature. The great law of continuity runs on through the change of conversion. Take a man who has been the slave of some sin. The evil will not cease to tempt, nor will the effects of the past on character be annihilated. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,’ remains true. In many ways there will be permanent consequences. There will remain the scars of old wounds; old sores will be ready to burst forth afresh. The great outlines of character do remain.
b What is the condition of renewal?
‘If any man be in Christ’-how distinctly that implies something more than human in Paul’s conception of Christ. It implies personal union with Him, so that He is the very element or atmosphere in which we live. And that union is brought about by faith in Him.
c How does such a state of union with Christ make a man over again?
It gives a new aim and centre for our lives. Then we live not unto ourselves; then everything is different and looks so, for the centre is shifted. That union introduces a constant reference to Him and contemplation of His death for us, it leads to self-abnegation.
It puts all life under the influence of a new love. ‘The love of Christ constraineth.’ As is a man’s love, so is his life. The mightiest devolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. ‘A new affection’ has ‘expulsive power,’ as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingering withered leaves. So union with Him meets the difficulty arising from inclination still hankering after evil. It lifts life into a higher level where the noxious creatures that were proper to the swamps cannot live. The new love gives a new and mighty motive for obedience.
That union breaks the terrible chain that binds us to the past. ‘All died.’ The past is broken as much as if we were dead. It is broken by the great act of forgiveness. Sin holds men by making them feel as if what has been must be-an awful entail of evil. In Christ we die to former self.
That union brings a new divine power to work in us. ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’
It sets us in a new world which yet is the old. All things are changed if we are changed. They are the same old things, but seen in a new light, used for new purposes, disclosing new relations and powers. Earth becomes a school and discipline for heaven. The world is different to a blind man when cured, or to a deaf one,-there are new sights for the one, new sounds for the other.
All this is true in the measure in which we live in union with Christ.
So no man need despair, nor think, ‘I cannot mend now.’ You may have tried and been defeated a thousand times. But still victory is possible, not without effort and sore conflict, but still possible. There is hope for all, and hope for ME.
III. The completion in a perfectly renewed creation.
It is like some exotic that does not show its true beauty in our greenhouses. The life of a Christian on earth is a prophecy by both its greatness and its smallness, by both its glory and its shame, by both its brightness and its spots. It cannot be that there is always to be this disproportion between aspiration and performance, between willing and doing. Here the most perfect career is like a half-lighted street, with long gaps between the lamps.
The surroundings here are uncongenial to the new creatures. ‘Foxes have holes’-all creatures are fitted for their environment; only man, and eminently renewed man, wanders as a pilgrim, not in his home. The present frame of things is for discipline. The schooling over, we burn the rod. So we look for an external order in full correspondence with the new nature.
And Christ throned ‘makes all things new.’ How far the old is renewed we cannot tell, and we need not ask. Enough that there shall be a universe in perfect harmony with the completely renewed nature, that we shall find a home where all things will serve and help and gladden and further us, where the outward will no more distract and clog the spirit.
Brethren, let that mighty love constrain you; and look to Christ to renew you. Whatever your old self may have been, you may bury it deep in His grave, and rise with Him to newness of life. Then you may walk in this old world, new creatures in Christ Jesus, looking for the blessed hope of entire renewal into the perfect likeness of Him, the perfect man, in a perfect world, where all old sorrows and sins have passed away and He has made all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours- and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor ‘the cup of blessing’ ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and the old will be one.
Begin with trusting to Him to help you to change a deeper blackness than that of the Ethiopian’s skin, and to erase firier spots than stain the tawny leopard’s hide, and He will make you a new man, and set you in His own time in a ‘new heaven and earth, where dwelleth righteousness.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Can . . . ? Figure of speech Erotesis and Paroemia. .
accustomed = schooled, or trained.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Habit
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.Jer 13:23.
The people of Jerusalem were occasionally accustomed to see the dark-skinned Ethiopian, whether we suppose that these were true negroes from Southern Egypt or dark Arabs, and now and then leopards came up from the thickets on the Jordan, or from the hills of the southern wilderness about the Dead Sea. The black hue of the man and the dark spots that starred the skin of the fierce beast are fitting emblems of the evil that dyes and speckles the soul. Whether it wraps the whole character in black, or whether it only spots it here and there with tawny yellow, it is ineradicable; and a man can no more change his character once formed than a negro can cast his skin, or a leopard whiten out the spots on his hide.
When the words of the text were spoken, Coniah was still king over Jerusalem, and it was a kind of last appeal, sorrowful, plaintive, almost hopeless; for the people had so long turned away from God, had indeed sinned so deeply and for so many years, that sin appeared to be ingrained in them, and no more to be eradicated than the blackness of an African skin or the spots on a leopards hide. Jeremiah, indeed, well knew in his heart that Judah would not return to Jehovah, and so with pathetic bitterness he exclaimed: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
The spots of the leopard, though they have been acquired by imitation of its surroundings, have through long ages been so ingrained and fixed that they cannot be changed. The creature itself cannot alter or remove them by any effort; they are part of its very nature; and the pattern of its skin lasts throughout the whole life of the animal, and is communicated from parent to offspring. And so every sinner knows how very hard it is to change evil habits, to efface the stains of sin that have become dyed in the flesh. It is fatally easy to acquire what it is fatally hard to get rid of. You get so accustomed to your sin that you never feel how sinful it is. You are so like your surroundings that you have no sense of contrast or shame. You are content with yourselves, and make no effort to become better. And even when your conscience is aroused and you see the evil and the misery of your sin, the effort to root it out is painful in the extreme.1 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Gate Beautiful, 108.]
Here is a text on Habit. Let us consider
I.The Acquisition of Habit.
II.The Power of Habit.
III.The Hallowing of Habit.
IV.The Change of Habit.
I
The Acquisition of Habit
It appears to be an involuntary principle of our nature that we should acquire a tendency to repeat whatever we do often. This disposition or tendency we call habit. It is the effect of custom influencing all we do; according to the old adage, Use is second nature. And this tendency to repeat an action until it becomes habitual increases with each repetition, like the revolution of a wheel moving down an incline.
1. Habit may be conceived to arise in this way. When, in the process of timeof the day, or the week, or the month, or the yearthe point comes round at which we have been thinking of anything, or have done anything, by the law of the association of ideas we think of it again, or do it again. For instance, when day dawns we awake. We get out of bed because we have done so at that time before. At a later hour we take breakfast, and go away to business, for the same reason; and so on through the day. When Sunday morning comes our thoughts turn to sacred things, and we make ready to go to the House of God, because we have always been accustomed to do that. As the New Year draws nigh our mind turns to friendliness, and we think of all the means by which we can let our friends know that we are thinking of them. Of course it may be by some other juncture of circumstances, and not by the revolution of time, that we are reminded of what has been done in the past; but the cycles of time, the narrower and the wider, have a very great deal to do with the formation of habit. If we have done a thing only once before, when the point of time comes round again at which we did it there will be a tendency to recall it and to do it again; but this tendency will of course be far stronger if we have done it often before. Frequency enters greatly into habit. The reason why, when Sunday morning comes, we think of church, is not because we have been there once, but because we have been there every Sunday of our lives. The more frequently anything has been done, the stronger is habit, and frequency acts on habit through something else. Frequency gives ease and swiftness to the doing of anything. We do easily and swiftly anything that we have done often. Even things which seemed impossible can not only be done, but be done with facility, if they have been done often.
2. Habits are the elements of character. The deeds we do ripen into habits, and these form the warp and woof of character. The single act does not make character. There is sometimes a protest in the soul against the act just done, and a purpose never to repeat it. The first smoke may make the youth sick, but it does not characterize him as a smoker. The first drink may make the head dizzy, but it does not entitle the drinker to be called a drunkard. It is the repetition of acts that forms habits; and the habits of a man give him his character. It is a curious thing that the word habit means a garment that you can throw off when you please, and also a way of living that may be so bound up with you that you cannot change it. It seems as if it were meant in this twofold sense to convey the great truth that the sin which at first you can lay aside with ease like a loose coat may by frequent indulgence take such a firm hold of you as to become part of your very lifeas much part of yourself as the spots on the leopards skinand you may find it impossible to wrench yourself free from it. The wise man says in the Book of Proverbs. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.
When someone on one occasion repeated to Wellington the maxim that Habit is second nature, his reply was Second nature! It is ten times naturea sentiment very likely to be in the mind of a disciplinarian who had spent all his life getting men to obey the word of command, and to face death in circumstances in which natural instinct would lead them to flee away.1 [Note: J. Stalker.]
The power of exercising the will promptly, in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and thereby resisting the impulses of the lower nature, is of essential importance in moral discipline, and absolutely necessary for the development of character in its best forms. To acquire the habit of well-doing, to resist evil propensities, to fight against sensual desires, to overcome inborn selfishness, may require a long and persevering discipline; but when once the practice of duty is learnt, it becomes consolidated in habit, and thenceforward is comparatively easy.
The valiant good man is he who, by the resolute exercise of his freewill, has so disciplined himself as to have acquired the habit of virtue; as the bad man is he who, by allowing his freewill to remain inactive, and giving the bridle to his desires and passions, has acquired the habit of vice, by which he becomes, at last, bound as by chains of iron.2 [Note: Samuel Smiles, Character (ed. 1874), 192.]
II
The Power of Habit
1. Habit gains power by every repetition of an act. Human gifts and faculties have a power of expansion. They increase and multiply. For example, money attracts money, learning increases learning, joy brings joy. It is so with goodness: good habits lead us to acquire still better habits, while the poor fellow who has once earned a bad name, and who is shut out from the helps and privileges that ordinary men enjoy, will generally cultivate his evil propensities and strengthen only such habits as are bad.
Our several acts in life seem to be of little consequence in themselves, but they have all a terrible significance, for habit is just made up of little acts, and each one helps, and each one tells, and each succeeding act tells more and more. We know that if a stone is dropped from a height it falls so many feetsixteen feet during the first second. The next second it does not fall the same number of feet, but has acquired increased speed, and falls four times the distance it did during the previous second, and each succeeding second the speed is greater and swifter. The earth has a stronger gravitating power over it, draws it more quickly down, and it acquires momentum and gathers increasing rapidity as it falls. That is precisely the case with sin. It moves slowly at the start; but when it has begun, it increases in force and speed and dashes down the steep incline with resistless might.
In South Africa there is a curious plant known as a hook-thorn or grapple-plant, said to bear some resemblance to the cuttle-fish. The large flowers are of a lovely purple hue and spread themselves over the ground or hang in masses from the trees and shrubs. The long branches have sharp, barbed thorns, set in pairs throughout their length. When the petals fall off and the seed-vessels are developed and fully ripe, the two sides separate widely from each other and form an array of sharp-curved hooks. Woe to the traveller who ventures near at such a time! In one of the Kaffir wars with England, the English soldiers suffered terribly from this plant. While the Kaffir, unclothed and oily, escaped harm, the European was certain to be made and held a prisoner. If one hooked thorn caught a coat-sleeve the first movement at escape would bend the long slender branches and hook after hook would fix its point into the clothing. Struggling only multiplied the number of thorned enemies, and there was no way of escape except to stand still, cut off the clinging seed-vessels, and remove them one by one. Many a luckless soldier was run to death by a Kaffirs spear while thus trying to free himself. This is a vivid illustration of the dangerous power of evil habit, which through custom and long self-indulgence hooks into a mans very heart and holds him against his reason and against his will a prisoner even to his death.1 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Sinner and his Friends, 242.]
2. The power of habit steadily grows till it dominates the will. We cannot explain this phenomenon; the fact we know, and it is of vast importance that we should know it. A repetition of the same thoughts and actions is so apt to ensure their continuance that it is one of the most difficult things in the world to check this habitual operation of the mind, and give it a different direction from that in which it has been wont to flow. Even habits which relate to matters of indifference become inveterate, and are with great difficulty modified and overcome. Especially are they obstinate when they are under the control of some prevailing disposition, and fall in with the natural inclination of the mind.
Even in the most indifferent matter, the most ordinary postures, movements, and actions, when once people have got into a way of practising them, it seems next to impossible to leave them off. We come to do things without being aware that we do them: and when our attention is drawn to them, we feel as if we could not leave them off. Such is the power of habit or custom, put into our minds and bodies by Almighty God that we might be tried whether we will make a good or a bad use of it. How fearful to think what a turn it too often takes! how exceedingly horrible to be aware of shameful, corrupting, deadly sins, in a mans own self or his neighbour, having come to be so habitual as to be committed without the sinner being aware of it; or, if he is aware, with the feeling that he cannot help it.
The tyranny of evil habit is proverbial. The moralists compare it to a thread at the beginning, but as thread is twisted with thread, it becomes like a cable which can turn a ship. Or they compare it to a tree, which to begin with is only a twig that you can bend any way, but when the tree is fully grown, who can bend it? And apart altogether from such illustrations, it is appalling how little even the most strong and obvious motives can turn aside the course of habit.1 [Note: J. Stalker.]
I have seen a photograph of a group of undergraduates, among whom was the late Bishop Creighton, and next to whom stood a man of brilliant gifts, of great scholastic attainments, one who was thought to be about to take a great part in the world, and yet who died a billiard-marker in a low public-house near Wapping, a slave to drink and gambling. So it is, indeed, that sin grows and grows, the deadly cords of habit tighten and tighten, and the soul wanders further and further from God, until perhaps the man even boasts of the sin he has done, of the evil he has taught a boy, gloats over it, as Fagin gloating over the Artful Dodger. And ultimately, indeed, the habits become so formed that he does not even care to try to break them, and the stern decree sent forth in the vision of the Revelation comes trueHe that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.2 [Note: L. T. Dodd.]
3. One of the greatest dangers in the formation of evil habit is that the man who is drawn away into sin will not appreciate the deadly seriousness of his situation until the habit has become a most important factor in his whole scheme of life. Coleridge calls attention to the fact that centres or centrepieces of wood are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in process of construction, till the keystone is put in. Just such is the use that we make of pleasure. The pleasure lasts, perhaps, till the habit is fully formed; but, that done, the structure may stand eternal. All the pleasure and fascination that appeared at first in the sin disappears, and only the vice-like grip of a wicked habit remains.
A naturalist who has been travelling in South America tells how he was once walking in the forests of the Amazon River collecting bird-skins for mounting. He was threading a forest path, carrying in hand a gun loaded with very fine bird-shot, while his Indian guide followed, carrying a heavier gun charged with buckshot to use in case they should come upon a jaguar. A bird of brilliant plumage flew into a tree which overhung the path, and as he peered into the foliage trying to discern the bird he became aware of something swaying before his eyes and a flashing of prismatic colours producing on him something of the impression of a kaleidoscope. So unobtrusively had this thing come into view that it dawned only slowly on his mind, preoccupied with the search for the bird, that the object so softly reaching toward him was the head and six feet of the neck and body of an enormous water-boa. From its mouth the forked tongue was shooting and vibrating, and changing lights were flashed from its eyes, bent upon the hunter. With his cocked gun in hand he did not think to use it or to run away, but stood gazing, literally spellbound, as the snake, slipping from the bough on which it lay, advanced its head toward him.
Suddenly he heard his guide shout from behind him. The snakes head drew back with an angry hiss as the Indian crowded past him, raising his gun to his shoulder as he did so, and with the loud crack! crack! of the two barrels he seized the hunter with both arms and rushed him away from the place. Then he saw the snake, which had dropped from the tree, writhing and twisting in the patha monster twenty-eight feet long and of girth in proportion. Its head was shattered by the two charges of buckshot, but the convulsions of the body were enough to show the reptiles enormous strength and give an idea of how the naturalist would have fared if once it had thrown its coils around him. The boa would have done this in a few moments more if he had been left to himself. If the guide had not rushed to his aid, he would have stood still fascinated, and never would have stirred to avoid his fate. The snake had hypnotized him beyond the power of resistance or retreat.1 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Sinner and his Friends, 168.]
III
The Hallowing of Habit
1. The soul has its habits, which it acquires, even as the body and the mind acquire theirs, by use and practice. The habit of living without God is one which may be learned by any of us if we will. It is one of the easiest of all habits to acquire. Unlike some other habits, it demands of us no exertion and no self-denial; rather it consists in the refusal and repudiation of both of these. We have only to live at our ease, without care and without effort, and the habit is formed, too often for ever. When it is fully formed, then comes the peace of death, of spiritual death; and the soul that let God alone is at last let alone by God.
When you have for two or three days together forgotten your prayers, has it not become, even in that short time, more easy to neglect, more difficult to resume them? When you have left God out of sight in your daily life, when you have allowed yourself to think scorn of His commands, when you have become careless about your language, trifling if not profane in conversation, cold and contemptuous and resentful in your thoughts of others; when you have thus fallen into an unchristian and irreligious state of mind and life, how soon have you found this state become as it were natural to you; how much less, day by day, did the idea of living without God alarm you; how much more tranquil, if not peaceful, did conscience become as you departed further and further in heart from the living God!2 [Note: C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 220.]
As you pass along the spacious nave of some ancient cathedral, and your eye rests upon the exquisite carving which adorns each arch and mullion and corbel, you might be disposed to think that so much art was no part of the original design, that what you saw and admired was the effect of skilful ornamentation, laid on, superimposed upon the original structure after the building was completed. But this is not so. In the best specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, every single piece of carving is wrought out of the solid stone; nothing is added or laid on. The building has grown in beauty as it grew in size and dignity, step by step, until it approached completion in fulfilment of the architects design. Those highly decorated corbels, that lovely tracery in the windows, those richly ornamented capitals, festooned, perhaps, with vine or oak leaves and hanging in natural clusters of grapes or acorns, so perfect that you feel you could go and pluck them from the stony stems out of which they spring, and from which they are suspendedall this delicate carving is inwrought in the actual material of the building itself. It is so with character. It must not be a something laid on, but inwrought, worked up out of the material of circumstance and wrought into the texture of our lives. The thin veneer of culture, the artificial polish of good breeding and good manners, is no substitute for character.1 [Note: V. R. Lennard, Our Ideals, 90.]
2. But there is another, an opposite, habit of soulthat of living to God, with God, and in God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the other, yet, like it, formed by a succession of acts, each easier than the last, and each making the next easier still. We must admit God into our life, and allow Him to shape and hallow our habits. There are two aspects of character, the Divine and the human; two determining influences at work, God and circumstance. In the lower aspect, character is the harvest of the years: a result of the amalgamated labours and trials, the conflicts and decisions, of this life, in which all the accumulated joys and sorrows, the hopes and regrets, of the past have registered their mark and left their impress upon the man. In the higher aspect, character proceeds from the touch of Divinity. It is the shaping of the human soul by the hand of God Himself.
There are thousands of people in the world with abilities that remain undeveloped, and talents that are wasted and thrown away. Poets, philosophers, architects, mathematicians, statesmen who are lost to the world through their genius never having been discovered; men whom circumstance has shunted from the path of fame and left to die in ignorance of powers which might otherwise have enriched mankind. The talent was there, latent in the mind, but it remained hidden and suppressed, waiting for education to draw it out. It is so with religion. The instincts of prayer and praise, of faith, hope, and love, are not dead, even where they remain passive and inoperative; they are hidden and suppressed in the case of every man who leads a godless life, buried deep down within the soul under the accumulated load of worldly cares and alien associations, but they are still alive, like seeds lying through the long winter, forgotten in the earth, waiting for the return of spring to woo them from their hiding-place.
3. We must resolutely draw out the good which is the opposite of the evil we are indulging. And by educating, by drawing out more and more, the desire after this good, the evil is more and more put to flight. Thus the way to overcome inattentiveness of the mind is not so much to fix our attention on the fault as to cultivate and educate its opposite, concentration of mind. So the unhappy custom of always seeing the failings in our neighbours is best met by cultivating the spirit of charity, by going with those people who are opposite to ourselves in this respect; by endeavouring to look at the world in a larger, kindlier, and more gracious spirit; so those who are slaves to fleshly lusts may gradually diminish the power of these things by occupying their minds with chaste thoughts and images, and reading books which foster the growth of a pure imagination; and those who have the miserable habit of grumbling at life, which you will generally find where there is most to be thankful for, can by educating the spirit of gratitude put this tendency to flight, which more than any other takes all the savour out of life, and turns its sweetest blessings into bitterest gall.
Why should we think so dolorously of habitthis law of life? Like all Gods swords of truth, it is two-edged, and turns both ways, working for good as much as for ill. It is a friendly ally that we find in this solemn law of habit, as it may also be an enemy.
Commonly, when men speak of habits, they have bad habits in their mind. As Professor James of Harvard says, in his Talks on Psychology: They talk of the smoking-habit, and of the swearing-habit, and of the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit, or the moderation-habit, or the courage-habit. After a certain output of deliberate effort and a period of practice, the vital virtues become second-nature; we acquire the instinct for self-denial, the prayer-habit, the Bible-reading-habit, the purity-habit, the truth-habit, the habits of faith, and hope, and love. Our receptive and expansive nature waits ready to incorporate all such pieties and virtues in its fibre and spontaneous movement. It is specially at the early stage that we have to bend our wills and drill our natural proclivities and watch ourselves with sentinel alertness. Time after time it is much against the grain to keep up the good custom; but the grain will soon grow to the repeated demand, like the muscles of a child-acrobat, or the branches of a Japanese dwarf-tree. Every time we repeat the exercise in self-mastery or honour or devotion, by the law of vis inertiae in nature the power to keep on in the good way increases.1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 129.]
IV
Change of Habit
Has Jeremiah uttered the whole truth? Can nothing be done if years of habit have bent our natures into one shape, and that shape is deformed? Are we helpless if character has already been made crooked and perverse by the continual warping of evil habit? Is there no hope that the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots?
1. It is next to impossible for a man who has arrived at mature age, with evil habits formed in early years, to turn his course; no consideration that you can put before him has sufficient power to break down the practice. He is as convinced as you can be of the mischief of the course he is pursuing; no one laments it more bitterly, and at times feels it more keenly, and no one is more ready to form resolutions to amend. But the language of the prophet is expressive of the case, Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? There is an irresistible force in the cravings of that long-indulged temper or appetite, which the man, with all his good intentions, has not the energy to resist. There has been no inward change, no power at work beyond the mere human resolution; and the consequence is that the latter state often becomes worse than the first. Those who witness the process become more and more convinced that there never will be any material change in that man; and they are ready to adopt language fully as expressive as that of the textthat it is as easy for the leopard to change his spots as it is for that man, with all his convictions and all his efforts, to continue in well-doing.
2. But that which is impossible with men is possible with God. We cannot change the Ethiopians skin or the leopards spots; but God can. He who made the machinery of the mind can, when it is broken, fashion it anew, and restore it to its functions. It is possible to convert the soul which has long been accustomed to do evil; but such conversion is as much the work of God as the creation of the soul was at the beginning.
The heart which no assaults could storm yields to the voice of love and mercy; the will which offered an obstinate resistance to the exhortation to turn and repent is at length subdued: the offer of a free pardon for all that is past overcomes the resistance. Religion, then, in a changed heart becomes the main business of life. It begins to pervade the every-day occupations. The heart is filled with the knowledge and love of God; and the new affections expel the old from the long-usurped throne. A change comes over the perceptive faculties. Beauty and consistency are now discerned in Gods plan of redemption. New fields of interest and occupation open out: a new world has been discovered, in which are seen things of greater moment than the politics or controversies of the day. And the wonder to a soul so enlightened is, how it could have been so exclusively set upon the things of earth, when the things that are spiritual were so close at hand, and, now that they are seen, afford such scope for the exercise of the highest faculties of the soul. It is thus, if we may so speak, that the Ethiopian does change his skin, and the leopard his spots; for God Himself undertakes to do that which with man is declared to be impossible.
When I lay in darkness and blind night, when I was tossed hither and thither by the billows of the world, and wandered about with an uncertain and fluctuating course, according to my habits at that time I considered it as something difficult and hard that anyone could be born again, lay aside what he was before, and although his corporeal nature remained the same, could become in soul and disposition another man. How, said I, can there be so great a transformationthat a man should all at once lay aside what is either innate from his very organization, or through habit has become a second nature? How should a man learn frugality who has been accustomed to luxuries? How should he who has been clothed in gold and purple condescend to simple attire? Intemperance must always, as heretofore, invite him with tenacious allurements, pride puff him up, anger influence him, ambition allure him, pleasure captivate himthus I have often said to myself, For as I was entangled in many errors of my former life, and did not believe that I could be freed from them; so I complied with the vices that cleaved to me, and despairing of amendment, submitted to my evil inclinations, as if they belonged to my nature. But after the stain of my former life had been taken away by the aid of regenerating water, a pure and serene light was poured into the reconciled heart; when, through the Spirit received from heaven, the second birth transformed me into a new manthings formerly doubtful were confirmed in a wonderful mannerwhat before was closed, became open, and dark things were illuminated; power was given to perform what before seemed difficult, and what was thought impossible became possible.1 [Note: Cyprian, Epistola ad Donatum, 3.]
(1) When once we are linked to Christ, that union breaks the terrible chain that binds us to the past. All died. The past is broken as much as if we were dead. It is broken by the great act of forgiveness. Sin holds men by making them feel as if what has been must bean awful entail of evil. In Christ we die to former self. As by changing the centre of a circle you change the position of all its radii, so, by changing the affections and the desires of the heart, Christ roots out every wrong action and implants the germ of every virtuous deed. His solution is not reformation, but regenerationnot new resolves, but a new birth.
Augustine in his Confessions wrote it as with his blood: For this very thing I was sighingbound as I was, not with anothers irons, but by my own will. For of a froward will was a lust made; and a lust served became a custom; and a custom not resisted became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together, a hard bondage held me enthralled.
Augustines Confessions tell us of his penal chains, but they tell us also how these chains were broken; and the power that broke their links of iron was, in one word, Christ. This transformation of a habit-bound slave of sin into a virtuous man of God is a moral miracle far more wonderful than any physical miracle recorded in the New Testament. When John Newton, the brutal swearing sailor, was changed into the saintly singer of such hymns as How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, the Ethiopian changed his skin, the leopard his spots, and one accustomed to do evil learnt to do good. And there are multitudes alive among men and beatified before God who have been emancipated from the grip of evil habit and made new creatures in Christ. There is no cant about it, nor any fond fancy; it is as sure as natures law itself.
That agnostic Positivist, the late Cotter Morison, gave away the most of his case against Christianity when he made the frank avowal: Ardent love, gratitude and veneration for Christ, when kindled, are able to snap the chains of habit, and sometimes prevent their being welded together again. Explain it how you willand better than staying to explain it is proving it by trialthe fact is certified that when Christ is sought and trusted with whole-hearted surrender, His Spirit works a moral revolution.1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 134.]
(2) We are animated by a new motive. The love of Christ constraineth. As is a mans love, so is his life. The mightiest revolution is to excite a new love, by which old loves and tastes are expelled. A new affection has expulsive power, as the new sap rising in the springtime pushes off the lingering withered leaves. So union with Him meets the difficulty arising from inclination still hankering after evil. It lifts life into a higher level where the noxious creatures that were proper to the swamps cannot live. The new love gives a new and mighty motive for obedience.
Obedience is the essential spirit of the Christian life. Christs command to us, as to His first followers, is Follow me. We do not know whither He will lead us. The future is veiled before our eyes. It is no part of our business to inquire into the consequences of our discipleship. That is in His hands. Having heard the imperative of the Highest in His call, our task is to follow His leading in the practical conduct of daily life, and for all the needs of the future to surrender our lives to Him in the great obedience of trust. Like the disciples of old, we follow behind Him on the road of life in the spirit of wonder. Sometimes He comes graciously near to us as a Friend; but at all times He is enthroned in our hearts as Lord and Master. Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. That is His word. And the response for which He asks is a love that expresses itself in a life of obedience to His commands.1 [Note: S. M. Berry, Graces of the Christian Character, 54.]
(3) We are set in a new world which yet is old. All things are changed if we are changed. They are the same old things, but seen in a new light, used for new purposes, disclosing new relations and powers. Earth becomes a school and discipline for heaven. The world is different to a blind man when cured, or to a deaf onethere are new sights for the one, new sounds for the other.
There is only one way in which the leopard can change his spots. It is by removing it to another locality where there are no trees, and no surroundings like those of its native place; and there it would gradually lose, in the course of a few generations, its protective spots, and become like the new circumstances. Fixed as the spots of the leopard may seem, there is no creature in reality more variable. The panther is a variety of the leopard, whose spots are different, because it inhabits different places; and the ounce is a kind of leopard which is found in cold and mountainous places, and therefore has a rougher fur, and its spots are not so sharply defined, and have a tendency to form stripes, while the general colour is paler. The American leopard or jaguar has got bold black streaks on its breast, and larger spots on its body, with a small mark in the middle of them; while the puma or American lion, which is only a kind of leopard, has a uniform light tawny tint. And the remarkable thing is that the young puma displays a gradual change of fur like the lion cub; its coat being at first marked by dark streaks and spots, which fade away into the uniform tawny hue when the animal increases in size. Thus you see that the spots of the leopard change with its changing circumstances.
And this was the way in which God endeavoured to cure the evil habits of His own people. All reforms had been on the surface only; the evil was too deep-seated to be removed by temporary repentance. So long as they remained in the place where they were accustomed to do evil they could not learn to do well. But away from the idolatrous associations with which their native land had become tainted, a new life of truth and holiness was possible to them. God therefore allowed them to be carried captive to Babylon; and there in new circumstances they were to re-learn the forgotten lessons of faith and righteousness.2 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Gate Beautiful, 110.]
Habit
Literature
Armstrong (W.), Five-Minute Sermons, 50.
Banks (L. A.), The Sinner and his Friends, 240.
Cooper (A. A.), Gods Forget-me-not, 47.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Miscellaneous, 374.
Lennard (V. R.), Our Ideals, 100.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Isaiah and Jeremiah, 274.
Macmillan (H.), The Gate Beautiful, 103.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xliii. (1897), No. 2536.
Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, i. 219.
Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 215.
Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 198 (J. Stalker); lii. 205 (A. Brooke); lxix 88 (L. T. Dodd).
Church of England Magazine, l. 273 (R. Burgess).
National Preacher, xi. 147 (G. Spring).
Preachers Magazine, xiv. 134 (C. J. Vaughan).
Treasury (New York), xxi. 616 (R. C. Hall).
Twentieth Century Pastor, xxxiv. 172 (W. Downey).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Ethiopian: Jer 2:22, Jer 2:30, Jer 5:3, Jer 6:29, Jer 6:30, Jer 17:9, Pro 27:22, Isa 1:5, Mat 19:24-28
accustomed: Heb. taught, Jer 9:5
Reciprocal: Jdg 13:1 – in the sight 1Sa 19:21 – sent messengers 2Ki 17:40 – they did not Pro 2:19 – None Isa 32:6 – the vile Jer 38:7 – Ethiopian Eze 23:43 – old Amo 9:7 – ye not Mar 10:25 – General Joh 5:44 – can Joh 6:44 – man Act 8:27 – a man Rom 8:7 – neither 2Pe 2:14 – that cannot 1Jo 2:29 – that every Rev 13:2 – was like
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jer 13:23. The unchangeable coloring on the surface of these living creatures is used to compare the fixed character of the nation of God’s people as a whole. Take note it does not say that the coloring cannot be changed, but that the creatures eannot change it themselves; some outside power must do it if it is changed. Likewise the kingdom of Judah had become so settled in its iniquity that only by some outside force could it be changed. That force is God and he is going t’o bring about the change by sending his nation into Babylonian captivity,
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jer 13:23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, &c. The word Cushi, here rendered Ethiopian, often signifies Arabian, in the Scriptures; Ethiopia being, by ancient writers, distinguished into Eastern (the same with Arabia) and Western Ethiopia. But here an inhabitant of the latter, that is, of Ethiopia properly so called, seems evidently to be meant, the people of that country, which lay south of Egypt, being much more remarkable than the Arabians for their black colour. It seems hardly necessary to observe to the reader, that Jeremiah does not intend to express here the absolute impossibility of a change taking place in the principles and practices of the ignorant and wicked. To suppose this, would be to contradict the whole tenor of his writings, and to render insignificant and absurd all his invitations to repentance. Nay, it appears from the last verse of this chapter that he did not suppose the reformation even of this people to be an absolute impossibility. We are therefore to understand this as a proverbial expression, which, like many others in Scripture, is not to be taken in the strictness of the letter; the prophet designing only to express the extreme difficulty of a moral change in habitual sinners, and particularly in those presumptuous and obstinate sinners of Israel to whom his discourse is directed. Dodd.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Jerusalemites were so steeped in evil that it was impossible for them to change. They could no more change then than the dark Ethiopian could change the color of his skin or the leopard his spots. They had passed the point of no return; repentance was now impossible for them (cf. Heb 6:4-6).
"Here is a classic example of loss of freedom of the will through persistent sinning. Sin becomes natural. Jeremiah is speaking of the force of habit, not denying freedom of choice (cf. Joh 8:34)." [Note: Feinberg, p. 466.]