that, corrupt as man now is, there was a time when he was by the Creator called very good; hence there is no passion or feeling in the human heart but was originally good. "We put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us;" and by wise and prudent management, they do obey us. Now our passions require the same restraint; and if we look to the Lord for assistance, and bring our passions under the regulating influence of the Holy Word, they will be kept to their proper duty, and minister to our real happiness. To regulate our passions, to restrain them within proper bounds, to use them so that they may conduct us in the path of virtue, is the office and duty of Christian Temperance.
We turn now to the guidance and proper control of our actions. The apostle declares that none of us liveth to himself; and hence the duty of man is to provide for the well-being, and health of his own body, that he curtail not, by excess, the uses he was designed by the Lord to perform. Here temperance in eating at once claims our attention. It is well known that the partaking of certain meats inflames the passion of anger; and he who eats to excess, sins against his own body; and, what is worse, injures his own mind. The mind becomes inflamed, stolid, or excited, as the passions are improperly exercised; and when man subsists upon simiple food, and satisfies his appetite without excess, his mind is preserved from inflammatory action. Hence the apostle declares: "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live:" and hence also he says in another place "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate
