ew wine!' Well for the Church, and well
for the men who deserve the taunt; for it means that they have learned
something of the emotion that corresponds to such magnificent and awful
verities as Christian faith converses with.

I did not intend to say so much about that; I turn now for a moment to
the consideration of what this exhortation really means. It means, as I
take it, mainly this: the prime Christian duty of self-restraint in the
use and the love of all earthly treasures and pleasures.

I need not do more than remind you how, in the very make of a man's
soul, it is clear that unless there be exercised rigid self-control he
will go all to pieces. The make of human nature, if I may say so, shows
that it is not meant for a democracy but a monarchy.

Here are within us many passions, tastes, desires, most of them rooted
in the flesh, which are as blind as hunger and thirst are. If a man is
hungry, the bread will satisfy him all the same whether he steals it or
not; and it will not necessarily be distasteful even if it be poisoned.
And there are other blind impulses and appetites in our nature which ask
nothing except this:--'Give me my appropriate gratification, though all
the laws of God and man be broken in order to get it!'

And so there has to be something like an eye given to these blind
beasts, and something like a directing hand laid upon these instinctive
impulses. The true temple of the human spirit must be built in stages,
the broad base laid in these animal instincts; above them, and
controlling them, the directing and restraining will; above it the
understanding which enlightens it and them; and supreme over all the
conscience with nothing between it and heaven. Where that is not the
order of the inner man you get wild work. You have set 'beggars on
horseback,' and we all know where they go! The man who lets passion and
inclination guide is like a steam-boat with all the furnaces banked up,
with the engines going full speed, and nobody at the wheel. It will
drive on to the rocks, or wherever the bow happens to point, no matter
though death and destruction lie beyond the next turn of the screw. That
is what you will come to unless you live in the habitual exercise of
rigid self-control.

And that self-control is to be exercised mainly, or at least as one very
important form of it, in regard to our use and estimate of the pleasures
of this present life. Yes! it is not only from the study of a man's ma