do otherwise, are ignorant and stupid." The brilliant but sadly inconsistent Stoic philosopher, Seneca, inculcated, if he did not always practise, a true temperance. He declared: “I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes." Saint Paul, contemporary with Seneca, inculcated and practised a temperance grounded in the absolute subjection of self to God and to the spiritual aims of life. In his letter to the Corinthians, he reminded them that those who contended in the games for a prize were temperate. The illustration was homely, but striking and suggestive; the wrestler or runner, in preparing for the contest, must bring himself wholly into subjection to the laws of physical health and development. He must rigorously control all his habits of living, — of eating and drinking and sleeping, of resting and exercising. He must control also his passions and his moods; for he must have not only physical soundness and strength, but also presence of mind, alertness, courage, and perseverance. All of these qualities are needed in the arena; he who is deficient in any of them risks failure and defeat. Human life is a contest, a race, an agony [aywvía] as the Greeks called it, and it demands a moral disci pline and self-mastery like that of the athlete, We are in the world to develop character; and we are surrounded by hostile influences which we must overcome in order to become true men and women. We have weaknesses within which must be supplanted by disciplined strength. We have physical appetites which, properly ruled, are sources of pleasure, and ministrant to our well-being, but which, if allowed to rule us, will involve us in a bondage that is both degrading and destructive. We have faculties of mind and heart which, regulated and trained in accordance with moral law, are elements of both power and greatness, but ungoverned are sources and instruments of mischief to ourselves and others. God evidently means that we shall "live in the spirit," that is, with our spiritual faculties regnant, and our spiritual interests uppermost. It is His will that we should be served by the flesh, and not be its servants; that every faculty and passion of our natures shall be under the control of a right will, and so ministrant to our best life. In its highest sense temperance is a holy self-government of our entire nature of body, mind, and spirit in accordance with the will of God. - A true self-control involves, then: (1) Control of the physical appetites. Such control is absolutely necessary to right living. I do not counsel asceticism; Christianity does not prescribe asceticism, on the contrary, asceticism is opposed to that full, rounded, vigorous life of which Christianity gives us the ideal. But in every man who would live as he ought to live, there must be something of the force and fibre which enter into the character of the ascetic. "All things are lawful for me," said Saint Paul; "but I will not be mastered by any." There is the truly temperate man, in whom, by long discipline, self-control has become easy and inevitable. On every side the thoughtful observer of life discovers examples of the ruin that is wrought by lust, — that is, by appetite which has become excessive. Not only are natural appetites given rein until they have grown monstrous and despotic, but artificial appetites are created which, like a ghastly Frankenstein, develop a kind of independent life and force, and then turn on their creator to torment him without pity. The appetite for intoxicants, if not wholly artificial in some cases, is yet so perverted and exaggerated that it has all the character of an unnatural and external despot. The thoroughly subjugated victim of strong drink is almost the most pitiable creature on earth; he becomes half beast or half demon. In the place of sweet, human reasonableness comes a maudlin idiocy or a maudlin fury. What a mute confession of unspeakable degradation there is in the very appearance of a confirmed sot! Behold a man no longer in possession of himself! The flesh is master; the spiritual nature is choked in the mire of sensuality; and the mental faculties are a mere mob of enfeebled powers under bondage to a bestial or mad tyrant. Young men, let drink alone; not because it is a sin to take a glass of wine, but because it is a sin and a shame for you to abdicate your manhood under the influence of a morbid appetite which you must either create by immoral excess, or which, having been created by prenatal influences, you must waken and nurse by indulgence before it has the fatal power to bind you hand and foot. But there are other appetites which are just as imperious and, perhaps, quite as harmful as the appetite for intoxicants. The latter seems specially evil because of the rapidity and completeness with which it breaks down self-control and debauches the moral nature. But all appetites, the natural as well as the artificial, which exist in most cases only by our fault, should be subject to reason and conscience and will. They have no right to mastery. Settle early the question which is to be your master, It is no such easy question your body or you. to settle as you may suppose; for the very strength of your nature, on the passional side, enhances the difficulty. The question is never effectually and finally settled until you are willingly ruled by a high, moral purpose; and until it is settled you have no self-control which will insure any real and permanent success in life. Hate not the body; prize it rather, and nourish and develop it, but keep it under. Like fire, it is a good servant, but a ruinous master. (2) Self-control involves also command of one's faculties and dispositions. Skill in any work is the result of a full self-possession; it is such grasp and command of one's powers as enables him to direct them efficiently to a desired end. It is his physical self-control that enables the skilful mechanic to make his hands and his tools do exactly what he plans. The same tools in the hands of one lacking such self-control are almost useless and sometimes even dangerous. It is physical self-control |