of getting a few fine
clothes. How often do men, just for the pleasure of drink, besot
their souls and bodies, madden their tempers, neglect their
families, make themselves every Saturday night, and often half the
week, too, lower than the beasts which perish. And then, when a
clergyman complains of them, they think him unreasonable; and by so
thinking, show that he is right, and St. Paul right: for if I say
to you, My dear young people (and I do say it), if you give way to
filthy living and filthy talking, and to drunkenness, and to vanity
about fine clothes, you will surely die--do you not say in your
hearts, 'How unreasonable: how hard on us! If we can enjoy
ourselves a little, why should we not? It is our right, and do it
we will; and if it is wrong, it ought not to be wrong.' Why, what
is that but saying, that you ought to do just what your body likes:
that you are debtors to your flesh; and that your flesh, and not
God's law, is your master. So again, when people grow older,
perhaps they are more prudent about bad living, and more careful of
their money: but still they live after the flesh. One man sets his
heart on making money, and cares for nothing but that; breaks God's
law for that, as if that was the thing to which he was a debtor,
bound by some law which he could not avoid to scrape and scrape
money together for ever. Another (and how often we see that) is a
slave to his own pride and temper, which are just as much bred in
his flesh: if he has been injured by any one, if he has taken a
dislike against any one, he cannot forget and forgive: the man may
be upright and kindly on many other points; prudent, too, and sober,
and thoroughly master of himself on most matters; and yet you will
find that when he gets on that one point, he is not master of
himself; for his flesh is master of him: he may be a strong-minded,
shrewd man upon most matters but just that one point: some old
quarrel, or grudge, or suspicion, is, as we say, his weak point:
and if you touch on that, the man's eye will kindle, and his face
redden, and his lip tremble, and he will show that he is not master
of himself: but that he is over-mastered by his fleshly passion, by
the suspiciousness, or revengefulness, or touchiness, which every
dumb animal has as well as he, which is not part of his man's
nature, not part of God's image in him, but which is like the beasts
which perish.

Now, my friends, suppose I said to you, 'If y