Growing Worse.
I. It must be remembered that we all begin with certain faults different persons with different faults. What we mean by a man's character getting worse is that these faults in us strengthen and increase. But is it an unaccountable and strange process, that by which faults grow? By no means. It is the simplest process in the world; it is simply by repeating a faulty action or humour time after time. We have only to go on in the same way, and, at the end of the time, we have a worse fault; for that is the nature of habit, that it grows by mere repetition of the same conduct and becomes a stronger habit. But if the sinful habit is stronger, then the man is a worse man.
II. People often go on getting worse and worse, letting sin grow, but thinking it all the time quite impossible that they should be worse. That idea which they started with they never give up the idea that they never can alter for the bad. All alteration, they think, must be for the better; if they have not improved, then they are the same they always were; but worse they cannot be. It is this deep ingrained assumption in men's minds which blinds them to the most startling facts about themselves. They are now absorbed in covetous passions and worldly aims; they have fierce desires to get this and that earthly prize; they sacrifice honesty; they do the meanest acts; they are guilty of constant pieces of deception in order to win them. There was a day when they would have shrunk from this; now they do it all as a matter of course; but still they have no idea that they are at all worse than they were. It is always circumstances that change, never themselves. But Scripture everywhere says plainly that men do grow worse in this life, and that they grow worse out of themselves; and therefore it is that they reap the wages of death, because it is their own sin. Let us look to ourselves, to our own hearts, and watch and correct evil at its fount; for there is the fount of it.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional,p. 118.
References: Matthew 12:45. B. F. Westcott, Expositor,3rd series, vol. vi., p. 83; J. Keble, Sermons from Lent to Passiontide,p. 203.