HABIT ECONOMIZES MORAL EFFORT.--To have to decide each time the question
comes up whether we will attend to this lecture or sermon or lesson;
whether we will persevere and go through this piece of disagreeable work
which we have begun; whether we will go to the trouble of being
courteous and kind to this or that poor or unlovely or dirty
fellow-mortal; whether we will take this road because it looks easy, or
that one because we know it to be the one we ought to take; whether we
will be strictly fair and honest when we might just as well be the
opposite; whether we will resist the temptation which dares us; whether
we will do this duty, hard though it is, which confronts us--to have to
decide each of these questions every time it presents itself is to put
too large a proportion of our thought and energy on things which should
take care of themselves. For all these things should early become so
nearly habitual that they can be settled with the very minimum of
expenditure of energy when they arise.
