The extent to which a single act shall produce
this double effect, depends upon its intensity, its intensity depends
upon the fullness and energy of will which will enter into it, and the
energy of will depends upon the strength of the motives resisted. An
act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict,
which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which
marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to
shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this
sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations
which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to
derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of
resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of
transgression, is fitted to impart. By one such act a man is impelled
with an amazing momentum in the path of evil. He lives years of sin in a
day or an hour. It is always a solemn crisis when the first step is to
be taken in a career of guilt, against which nature and education,
or any other strong influences protest. The results are unspeakably
perilous when a man has to fight his way into crime. The victory creates
an epoch in his life.
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