version difficult. The first of these causes is the tyranny of bad habits. So strong are these that many would die rather than relinquish them. Hence St. Jerome declares that a. long habit of sin robs virtue of all its sweetness. For habit becomes second nature, and to overcome it we must conquer nature itself, which is the greatest victory a man can achieve. "When a vice is confirmed by habit," says St. Bernard, it cannot be extirpated except by a very special and even miraculous grace." Therefore, there is nothing which a Christian should dread more than a habit of vice, because, like other things in this world, vice claims prescription, and once that is established it is almost impossible to root it out. A second cause of this difficulty is the absolute power which the devil has over a soul in sin. He is then the strongly-armed man mentioned in the Gospel, who does not easily relinquish what he has acquired. Another cause of this difficulty is the separation which sin makes between God and the soul. Though represented in Scripture[1] as a sentinel guarding the walls of Jerusalem, God withdraws farther and farther from a sinful soul, in proportion as her vices increase. We can learn the deplorable condition into which this separation plunges the soul from God Himself, Who exclaims by His prophet: "Woe to them, for they have departed from Me. Woe to them when I shall depart from them."[2] This abandonment by God is the second woe of which St. John speaks in the Apocalypse.
