prison of necessary and unavoidable misery, from which we shall never
escape till we have paid the uttermost farthing.

Do you not understand me? Then I will give you an example. Suppose the
case of a man hurting his health by self-indulgence of any kind. Then
his adversaries are the laws of health. Let him agree with them quickly,
while he has the power of conquering his bad habits, by recovering his
health, lest the time come when his own sins deliver him up to God his
judge; and God to His terrible officers of punishment, the laws of
Disease; and they cast him into a prison of shame and misery from which
there is no escape--shame and misery, most common perhaps among the lower
classes: but not altogether confined to them--the weakened body, the
bleared eye, the stupified brain, the premature death, the children
unhealthy from their parents' sins, despising their parents, and perhaps
copying their vices at the same time. Many a man have I seen in that
prison, fast bound with misery though not with iron, and how he was to
pay his debt and escape out of it I know not, though I hope that God does
know.

Are any of you, again, in the habit of cheating your neighbours, or
dealing unfairly by them? Your adversary is the everlasting law of
justice, which says, Do as you would be done by, for with what measure
you mete to others, it shall be measured to you again.

This may show you how a bodily sin, like self-indulgence punishes itself
by bringing a man into bondage of bodily misery, from which he cannot
escape; and in the same way a spiritual sin, like want of charity, will
bring a man into spiritual bondage from which he cannot escape. And
this, as in bodily sins, it will do by virtue of that mysterious and
terrible officer of God, which we call Habit. Habit, by which, we cannot
tell how, our having done a thing once becomes a reason for our doing it
again, and again after that, till, if the habit be once formed, we cannot
help doing that thing, and become enslaved to it, and fast bound by it,
in a prison from which there is no escape. Look for instance at the case
of the untruthful man. Let him beware in time. Who is his adversary?
Facts are his adversary. He says one thing, and Fact says another, and a
very stubborn and terrible adversary Fact is. The day will come, most
probably in this life, when Facts will bring that untruthful man before
God and before men likewise--an