who habitually disregards the voice speaking within, on a particular
subject will be likely, ere long, to extend the same habit of disregard
to something else; and thus on to the end of the chapter, if any end
there be to it?

No one, it is believed, will doubt that I have rightly described the
tendency of habit in large matters. He who would allow himself to steal
from day to day, unmindful of the voice within which bids him beware,
would not only, ere long, if unmolested, come to a point at which
conscience would cease to reproach him, but would be likely to venture
upon other kinds of wrong. I have seen those who would habitually steal
small things, and yet would not tell a lie for the world. But I have
known the habit of stealing continue till lying also gradually came to
be a habit, and was scarcely thought of as offensive in the sight of
God, or as positively wrong in the nature of things, any more than
picking up a basket of pebbles. From lying, the natural transition is
to profanity--and so on, till conscience, chased up and down like the
last lonely deer of a forest, at length exhausted, faints and dies.

Few, I say, will deny the tendency and power of habit, in regard to the
larger matters of life. But is it sufficiently known that every act
which can possibly be regarded as fraudulent in the smallest degree,
has the same tendency?

There are a thousand things that people do, which cannot be set down as
absolutely criminal, in the view of human law, or human courts, and
which are not forbidden in any particular chapter or verse of the
divine law, which, notwithstanding, are forbidden by the spirit of
both.