CHAPTER XI. TEMPERANCE or SELF. CONTROL. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”—GAL. V. 22, 23. THIS is not Temperance in its ordinary acceptation, but Moderation and Self-control in sensual pleasures. How many strong men have fallen for want of this! How many hopes have been disappointed, how many hearts broken, how many homes ruined, how many lives terminated in disgrace, owing to incontinence. Crowns, and ermines, and mitres, and epaulets have been lost through lust. Therefore should every one, who loves himself and his family, who prizes character and usefulness, and who is jealous for the honour of the Christian name, strive to have power over his own will, and to stand stedfast in his heart* against the allurements of bodily pleasure. * 1 Cor. vii. 37. Man is a compound of animal and spirit; and it is not by the absence of one of these elements, but by a just proportion, and by a subordination of the animal to the spiritual part, that Selfcontrol is developed. Previous discipline of the Will is necessary before a man can arrive at Self-command. Now the will seems to be a nervous energy for carrying our purposes into effect. It is the fountain of our resolves, the arbiter of our choice and conduct, and, in a good man, the Executor of Conscience. When a man is in a healthy state of mind,—the conscience illumined and the will strengthened by Divine grace, then he may be said to have power over himself; but there is a condition of mind in which the will has not enough strength to carry out what conscience sees and approves. A Christian, as well as a heathen, may mourn over this imbecility. There is a striking parallel in this between the confession of Ovid and the lamentation of St. Paul: I see and approve of better things, I follow worse things, says the Poet; while the Apostle admits: The good that I would I do not but the evil, which I would not, that I do. But there was a great difference; for Ovid allowed himself to be carried down the stream: whereas St. Paul struggled manfully against it, by the grace of God. Sometimes the will may be so far gone, that the man loses all self-control. He has no command over his appetites, his anger, his money, his tongue, or even his pen. Yet all the while he may not be intentionally wicked: his deliberate preference may be good. Hence Aristotle calls such an one "half-wicked." But is not the man responsible for the antecedent sins and faults which brought his will into such a state of debility? No doubt he is. The will may exist in too great or too little force, or it may harmonize duly with the other powers. In the case just supposed, although the will has been paralyzed, yet Christ can say to the sick of the palsy, "Arise and walk:" he can restore a palsied will. The man who has no power over his will is incontinent; that is, he cannot contain himself; and he has been well compared to those who are asleep, or mad, or intoxicated;* for they all have knowledge, but do not use it, so that in a manner they have it and have it not. Knowledge, therefore, is useless when there is an impotence of will it is only when men have the power to embody their knowledge in practice that it is useful. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. : It is unwise as well as untrue to say that there is no pleasure in pleasure, and that it is wholly bad. This is the language that the Christian rhetorician is apt to indulge in; but his audience know from experience that such assertions are false, and they disbelieve all his teaching. St. Paul was wiser: he admitted that men might enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. The true God has method of stating the case is this. implanted certain desires in man for most important purposes. When these desires are gratified in excess and unlawfully, then ensues remorse,† debility, and disease: but when they * Arist. Ethics, vii. 3. 7. † Dean Trench says of words like fille de joie that they are names, which may themselves be called "whited sepulchres," so fair are they without, yet hiding so much foul within; as, are well-regulated, and sparingly indulged, then ensues temperance and joy. Rarior usus commendat voluptates.* Let us argue the subject fairly with the bewitched sensualist. First, as to remorse, which supervenes upon self-indulgence. How disproportionate is the duration of Pleasure and Remorse. You may measure Pleasure by seconds, and Remorse by years. The Conscience, while it lives, gnaws the very vitals of a man, and he a thousand times wishes his sin undone. At the next stage of demoralization we often find Conscience dead, and the moral structure undermined. "The bewitching of naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest; and the wandering of concupiscence doth undermine the simple mind."† for instance, that in the French language which ascribes joy to a life which more surely than any other dries up all the sources of gladness in the heart, brings anguish, astonishment, blackest melancholy on all who have addicted themselves to it.-Lectures on Words: No. II. * Juvenal's Satires, xi. 208. Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 12. It is touching to read the ruinous experience of the great Poet Burns on this point. In an Epistle to a young friend, dissuading him from unlawful love, he says: "It hardens a' within, And petrifies the feeling." |