_There Is No Escape from Wrong-Doing. Mercy Cannot Rob Justice_

"Somehow I'll escape," is the fatal thought which blinds the poor fool who,
for the first time, treads the path of self-indulgence or wrong-doing. But
he ought to know that escape is impossible. No cave is dark enough, no
ocean deep enough to hide the transgressor from the consequences of his
misdeeds. A kind heaven may forgive him, and the one he injures may
overlook the offence; but his own body and mind cannot forget; they have
registered the deed once for all and it can never be atoned for or
forgotten. The doing of a bad deed changes the individual in some
particular, slight or great as the case may be, and, pathetic though it
seems, he cannot go back and try it over again; the scar remains, as if
seared by a hot iron, and, if the hurt is serious enough, heredity may pass
it down the ages.

How easily a bad habit is formed. "It won't hurt me" is whispered by the
siren voice of temptation, because the consequences of the transgression
are not felt or seen immediately, a second offence seems less serious than
the first. Soon habit steps in and stamps the process on mind and body and
before the author is conscious of it, a serious appetite or a degrading
vice is fastened upon him from which neither time nor effort, prayers nor
tears, may ever shake him free.

"_Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
That to be hated needs but to be seen,
But seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace_."

--Pope.