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ing their ranks, besieging a city, having the teeth of a lion, and the cheek teeth of a great lion, Joel i. 6. and ii. 7. 9.

If we be ever authorized to solve a difficult text by examining the licence of hyperbolical style: if ever it be necessary to reduce hyperbole to precision, is it not so now in explaining the text before us, He, that ruleth his spirit is better than he, that taketh a city? What justness can there be in comparing a man, who by reflection corrects his passions, with an hero, who, in virtue of concerted plans, great fatigues, spending days and nights on horseback, surmounting difficulties, enduring heats and colds, braving a variety of dangers, at last arrives, by marching through a shower of shot darkening the air, to cut through a squadron, to scale a wall, and to hoist his flag in a conquered city?

But however just this commentary may appear, you will make no use of it here, unless you place christianity in the exercise of easy virtues, and after the example of most men accommodate religion to your passions, instead of reforming your passions by religion. Endeavor to form principles, resist fashion and custom, eradicate prejudice, undertake the conquest of yourself, carry fire and sword into the most sensible part of your soul, enter the lists with your darling sin, mortify your members which are upon earth, rise above flesh and blood, nature, and self-love, and, to say all in one word, endeavor to rule your spirit; and you will find, that Soloman hath rigorously observed the laws of precision, that he hath spoken the language of logic and not of oratory, and that there is not a shadow of hyperbole, or exaggeration in this proposition, He, that ruleth his spirit, is better than he, that taketh a city.

But to what period shall we refer the explication of the text? We will make meditation supply the place of experience, and we will establish a truth, which the greatest part of you have not experienced, and which perhaps you never will experience. This is the design of this discourse. Our subject is true heroism, the real hero.

I enter into the matter. The word heroism is borrowed of the heathens. They called those men heroes, whom a remainder of modesty and religion prevented their putting into the number of their gods, but who for the glory of their exploits were too great to be enrolled among mere men. Let us purify this idea. The man, of whom Solomon speaks, he, who ruleth his spirit, ought not to be confounded with the rest of mankind; he is a man transformed by grace, one who, to use the language of scripture, is a partaker of the divine nature. We are going to speak of this man, and we will first describe him, and next set forth his magnanimity, or, to keep to the text, we will first explain what it is to rule the spirit, and, secondly, we will prove that he, that ruleth his spirit, is better than he, that taketh a city. If we proceed further, it will only be to add a few reflections tending to convince you, that you are called to heroism; that there is no middle way in religion;' that you must of necessity either bear the shame and infamy of being mean and dastardly souls, or be crowned with the glory of heroes.

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I. Let us first explain the words of the text, to rule the spirit. Few words are more equivocal in the sacred language than this which our interpreters have rendered spirit. It is put in different places for the thoughts of the mind, the passions of the heart, the emotions of sense, phantoms of ima

gination, and illusions of concupiscence. We will not trouble you with grammatical dissertations. In our idiom, to rule the spirit, (and this is precisely. the idea of Solomon) to rule the spirit is never to suffer ones-self to be prejudiced by false ideas, always to see things in their true point of view, to regulate our hatred and our love, our desires and our inactivity, exactly according to the knowledge we have obtained after mature deliberation, that objects are worthy of our esteem, or deserve our aversion, that they are worth obtaining or proper to be neglected.

But, as this manner of speaking, to rule the spirit, supposes exercise, pains, labors, and resistance, we ought not to confine ourselves to the general idea which we have given. We consider man in three points of light; in regard to his natural dispositions; in regard to the objects that surround him; and in regard to the habits which he hath contracted.

1. Consider the natural dispositions of man. Man, as soon as he is in the world, finds himself the slave of his heart, instead of being master of it. I mean, that instead of a natural facility to admit only what is true, and to love only what is amiable, he feels I know not what interior power, which disposes him to truth and virtue, and conciliates him to vice and falsehood.

I am not going to agitate the famous question of free-will, nor to enter the lists with those, who are noted in the church for the heresy of denying the doctrine of human depravity; nor will I repeat all the arguments good and bad, which are alledged against it. If there be a subject, in which we ought to have no implicit faith, either in those who deny, or in those who affirm; if there be a subject, in the discussion of which they who embrace the

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side of error advance truth, and they who embrace the side of truth advance falsehoods, this is certainly the subject. But we will not litigate this doctrine. We will allege here only one proof of our natural depravity, that shall be taken from experience, and, for evidence of this fatal truth, we refer each of you to his own feelings.

Is virtue to be practised? Who does not feel, as soon as he is capable of observing, an inward power of resistance? By virtue, here I understand an universal disposition of an intelligent soul to devote itself to order, and to regulate its conduct as order requires. Order demands that, when I suffer, I should submit myself to the mighty hand of God, which afflicts me. When I am in prosperity, order requires me to acknowledge the bounty of my benefactor. If I possess talents superior to those of my neighbor, order requires me to use them for the glory of him from whom I received them. If I am obliged to acknowledge that my neighbor hath a richer endowment than I, order requires me to acquiesce with submission, and to acknowledge with humility this difference of endowment: should I revolt with insolence, or dispute through jealousy or self-love, I should act disorderly.

What I affirm of virtue, that it is a general disposition, that I affirm also in regard to an indisposition to sin. To avoid vice is to desist alike from every thing contrary to order, from slander and anger, from indolence and voluptuousness, and so on.

He, who forms such ideas of the obligations of men, will have too many reasons to acknowledge, by his own inward feelings and experience, that we bring into the world with us propensities hostile and fatal to such obligations. Some of these are in the body; others in the mind.

Some are in the body. Who is there, that finds 2 M

VOL. IV.

in his senses that suppleness and readiness of compliance with a volition, which is itself directed by laws of order? Who does not feel his constitution rebel against virtue? I am not speaking now of such men as brutally give themselves up to their senses, who consult no other laws than the revolutions of their own minds, and who, having abandoned for many years the government of their souls to the humors of their bodies, have lost all dominion over their senses. I speak of such as have the most sincere desire to hear and obey the laws of order. How often does a tender and charitable soul find in a body subject to violence and anger obstacles against the exercise of its charity and tenderness? How often does a soul, penetrated with respect for the laws of purity, find in a body rebellious against this virtue terrible obstacles, to which it is in a manner constrained to yield?

Disorder is not only in the body; the soul is in the same condition. Consult yourselves in regard to such virtues, and vices as are, so to speak, altogether spiritual, and have no relation, or a very distant one to matter, and you will find you brought into the world an indisposition to some of these virtues, and an inclination to the opposite vices. For example, avarice is one of these spiritual vices, having only a very distant relation to matter. I do not mean, that avarice does not incline us toward sensible objects, I only say, that it is a passion less, seated in the material than in the spiritual part of man; it rises rather out of reflections of the mind than out of motions of the body. Yet how many people are born sordid; people always inclined to amass money, and to whom the bare thought of giving, or parting with any thing, gives pain; people who prove, by the very manner in which they exercise the laws of generosity, that they are natu

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