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of worship, and yet after leaving church they can go back to their bad and idle lives, and don't seem to be any better for steeping themselves in the luxury of devotion; it has been a luxury, nothing more. Yet we don't hear this commonly condemned, neither do I condemn it. I don't condemn any man or woman who finds pleasure in religious devotions. What I condemn is their fatal inconsistency. The life does not answer to the prayer. That is the mischief. Don't suppose that warm feelings are wrong in religion or anywhere else. It is the application that you make of them; that is where people go wrong. All feeling is given you to help you to act; and when that same feeling within you is misguided, it is not the power of feeling that is wrong—that is a precious power but you are wrong, when you fail to make a right and proper use of it.

Brethren, store up in your hearts the memory and the prospect of the precious joy of devotion. Think of the hours when God has visited your spirit, when you felt that you were alone with Him in the secret moments of blessed joy; but oh! forget not that upon all those whom God thus blesses is laid the burden of work, that they should go forth invigorated and strengthened through joy in prayer, and not enervated by the mere luxury of devotion.

131. Now then, you see my view of pleasure. It is this; it is a component part of human life, without which life cannot be healthy. What you have got to do is not to crush it, and not to abuse it, but to use it. There have

been these three theories of what we are to do with pleasure. There is, first, the theory that pleasure must be crushed. 'All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; these are not of the Father, but of the world: and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.' When people quote these texts against enjoyment and the pleasures of the world, they forget that the 'world,' in the mouth of Christ and His Apostles, always meant the evil characteristics, the sensual tendencies, and the misguiding sophistries of the Greek or rather the Roman world of the period.

But, my brethren, the plan of crushing out your senses, the plan of denying them every kind of gratification has been tried, and has miserably failed. That was the plan of the early Church; and good men, conscientious men thought at one time that they could only get rid of the evil practices, which most people were in the habit of indulging in, by declaring war upon every kind of pleasure, and so they taught that everything which gratified the senses was wrong; and then we got the ascetic form of religion. Now asceticism is very wholesome on occasion as a protest against a bad kind of life, but it is a poor rule for a good life, it leaves out half life, and it ends by corrupting the other half. Will anyone tell me that the ascetic form of Christianity prolonged beyond its day has not been one of the most disastrous failures? It lingers with us now, but it is doing little good. Asceticism, I repeat, asceticism as a protest, may sometimes be powerful and wholesome, but

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asceticism as a lasting rule of life will never answer, it is founded on a misunderstanding of the human constitution. You may bury your senses, but they will be constantly resurrected; they will crop up in a number of abnormal and astonishing forms. They will come back with seven devils, probably more. If you put aside the proper use of that which God has given you richly to enjoy, and whereby you grow and develop, you will be haunted by phantoms that nothing can exorcise. For Nature is inexorable, she bows only to higher law, but not to tyranny, not to violence, not to murder; and asceticism means tyranny, violence and murder. Death is written in the ascetic's face, and death by violence. He walks about a living skeleton, filled with self-torment and fruitless pain, and upon this caput mortuum is written at last the unnatural and ghastly motto of Felo-de-Se

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132. Then there is the abuse of pleasure. I see around me, every day, young men burning out the lamp of life. I see them rushing into everything which titillates the senses; everything which has the name of, or that disgraces the name of pleasure is eagerly taken, sought out by them, and one after another idol is cast aside and broken up, because it is hopelessly inadequate to fulfil their insatiable need. They have abused pleasure, and pleasure has turned upon them, and has rent them where they stood. Put the lean ascetic on the right hand, and the bloated voluptuary on the left, and as far as truth of life goes there is not much to choose

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between them, for each has gone hideously wrong, though one is nobly and the other basely wrong. abuse of pleasure I need not trace any further, because our streets are reeking with it; our society is rotten with it; our social fabric is crumbling beneath it; our best institutions are being shaken and paralysed by it. I need not tell you that whatever may be done with pleasure, the abuse of pleasure is always, everywhere, and under all circumstances disastrous and degrading.

133. But the question you are by this time asking yourselves is this-How in my practical life am I to treat pleasure? What am I to do with it, supposing it always comes before me in an unbalanced shape, supposing it always comes with the finger of the tempter? Supposing no pleasure ever comes which does not seem a little wrong, which does not tend either to corrupt me or human society, and this high life which I wish to keep pure? Then, supposing pleasure is a settled thing, which you say cannot be got rid of out of life with safety, and which yet can hardly be kept in life with safety; suppose it is thus, like fire, which warms and scorches-like a two-edged sword cutting both ways,-what do you advise?

Then comes the point where the clergyman, whom the people are constantly coming into collision with on this subject, has to step forward and deliver a most difficult judgment. And it is not without some little malice and satisfaction that the honest inquirer sees his spiritual adviser brought practically to bay; but, indeed, the

tables may often fairly be turned upon the honest inquirer. There are numbers of people in this church who know fairly well what it is right for them to do. But they don't like to do it,-' Ay, there's the rub,'-and so when they have got something they want to do, which they know they ought not to do, they come to the clergyman and say, 'Do you think this is right?' and then the clergyman, or the moral teacher, is put in this dilemma. If he says, 'Yes, this is perfectly right in itself,' the man who knows it is perfectly wrong for him goes and does it, and blames the parson. Or, if the clergyman says, 'No, it is not right,' the man turns his back upon him, and says, 'Oh! here is a straight-laced set of people; they deny you the most ordinary enjoyments of life. They won't let you smoke, and they won't let you drink, and they won't let you dance, and they won't let you gamble; and you must not go here, and you must not go there, and you must not touch this, or taste this, or handle that; who can be guided by such a shallow set of formalists?' And yet, brethren, we are constantly, if we are to satisfy people, we are constantly expected to decide and say, 'This thing is right,' and This thing is wrong.' What are we to do under these circumstances?

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134. Some people, for instance, want to know whether going to balls is right, or whether going to theatres is right. Then they come to the clergyman, and perhaps, he thinks they are not right, and he says, 'No; these things are wrong.' Then he gets a little sect about him,

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