e. And there soon comes
to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. A man scarcely
tastes his brandy, and has little pleasure in drinking it, but he cannot
do without it, and so he gulps it down in bigger and bigger draughts
till delirium tremens comes in to finish all. Because, for another
thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of one's whole
nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. The grim
brute, like the watchdog of the old mythology, has three heads, and each
gaping for honey cakes. And if they were all gorged, there are other
longings in men's nature that will not let them rest, and for which all
the leeks and onions of Egypt are not food. So long as these are unmet,
you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for
that which satisfieth not.'

So we may lay it down as a universal truth, that whoever takes it for
his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does; or, as
George Herbert says,

'Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroider'd lies, nothing between two dishes--
These are the pleasures here.'

Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest
modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! _vanitas
vanitatum_! Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his
desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of
human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come,
children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played
out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which
deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and emotion, is a subject for
cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and fret
are 'merely players.'

Then, again, one more point in this portraiture of 'the old man,' is
that these _deceiving desires corrupt_. The language of our text conveys
a delicate shade of meaning which is somewhat blurred in our version.
Properly, it speaks of 'the old man which is _growing_ corrupt,' rather
than 'which is corrupt,' and expresses the steady advance of that inward
process of decay and deterioration which is ever the fate of a life
subordinated to these desires. And this growing evil, or rather inward
eating corruption which disintegrates and destroys a soul, is contrasted
in the subsequent verse with the 'new man which is _created_ in
righteousness.' There is in th