Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/20

 gladness, and think every one that has preceded them lax and unprofitable, because so little seems to have been accomplished; but they soon disclose the stony nature of the soil on which the seeds of truth have fallen, and become offended with the slightest difficulty, or with the slightest opposition which they meet. For a time they are all intemperate zeal, but speedily giving way, often become enemies instead of friends. When they first receive the truth, they may not conceive it possible to fall away. The evil into which they decline is a species of intemperance, and comes upon them step by step, as one that goeth a journey. The monster evil is seen at so great a distance, that it is thought it never can be reached; sluggishness in the performance of spiritual duties in one, and zeal without knowledge in another, with no standard of spiritual sobriety by which to regulate the affections and thoughts, give so much power to the idol within, that the most fatal inroads are made into the soul, and evil continues to lure him onward, until the man becomes spiritually insane; and excess in everything, and moderation or temperance in nothing, discloses but too truly that the "cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches," and the lust of other things, entering in, "choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful."

Temperance is, indeed, one of the chief virtues, but not in the sense of the word usually assigned to it. It is not temperance, when we discover ourselves to be in one extreme, immediately to rush into another. The unrestrained indulgence in any lust, or the immoderate devotion of the mind to any object, leads insensibly into evil; and hence even piety itself has been warned not to expect that prayer will be granted, be-