Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/43

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection." The indulgence of appetite till the taste becomes vitiated and accustomed to luxury, is wrong in every sense. It enervates the mind, and renders it unfit to meet the changes to which mankind are subject. Hence it is that we so often hear of suicide, under circumstances which cause us to wonder. But if we reflect, we might easily perceive, that where the appetite has been pampered, the body has become enervated, the faculties of the mind weakened, and when any accustomed gratifications of sense have been withdrawn, the soul seems to have nothing to fall back upon, and a terrible relief is sought in suicide. How little must such persons think of another world, and that they are rushing thither, uncalled and unprepared! We may urge that our means allow us to use these luxuries; but our means are only lent for a time, and lent, not to injure ourselves, but to do good to others. When the Lord gave us the means, He commanded us to occupy till he called us. He bestowed upon us the means for a certain purpose: in this case, to strengthen the body, and enable it to act more vigorously and efficiently as the instrument of the soul, and not to serve as a dead weight upon its usefulness. How unreasonable then, must it be to endanger the eternal happiness of the soul, and to risk the health of the body, by indulging the appetite of sensuality. An old writer has observed, that he never sat at a rich man's table, without imagining that he beheld diseases and death lurking in ambush among the dishes: and strong though the figure is, it is not quite void of