ke
that the necessity for a very rigid self-government appears, but the
observation of the conditions and circumstances in which he is placed
points the same lesson. All round about him are hands reaching out to
him drugged cups. The world with all its fading sweet comes tempting
him, and the old fable fulfils itself--Whoever takes that Circe's cup
and puts it to his lips and quaffs deep, turns into a swine, and sits
there imprisoned at the feet of the sorceress for evermore!

There is only one thing that will deliver you from that fate, my
brother. 'Be sober,' and in regard to the world and all that it offers
to us--all joy, possession, gratification--'set a knife to thy throat if
thou be a man given to appetite.' There is no noble life possible on any
other terms--not to say there is no Christian life possible on any other
terms--but suppression and mortification of the desires of the flesh and
of the spirit. You cannot look upwards and downwards at the same moment.
Your heart is only a tiny room after all, and if you cram it full of the
world, you relegate your Master to the stable outside. 'Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon.' 'Be sober,' says Paul, then, and cultivate the habit of
rigid self-control in regard to this present. Oh! what a melancholy,
solemn thought it is that hundreds of professing Christians in England,
like vultures after a full meal, have so gorged themselves with the
garbage of this present life that they cannot fly, and have to be
content with moving along the ground, heavy and languid. Christian men
and women, are you keeping yourselves in spiritual health by a very
sparing use of the dainties and delights of earth? Answer the question
to your own souls and to your Judge.

II. And now let me turn to the other thoughts that lie here. There is,
secondly, a motive which backs up and buttresses this exhortation. 'Let
us who are of the day'--or as the Revised Version has it a little more
emphatically and correctly, 'Let us, since we are of the day, be sober.'
'The day'; what day? The temptation is to answer the question by
saying--'of course the specific day which was spoken about in the
beginning of the section, "the day of the Lord," that coming judgment by
the coming Christ.' But I think that although, perhaps, there may be
some allusion here to that specific day, still, if you will look at the
verses which immediately precede my text, you will see that in them the
Apostle has passed from the though