To desire, with all the ardour and all the earnestness of our souls, the consummation, not of our own wishes, but of the holy will of God, as it is expressed in the Lord's Prayer, is a further duty inculcated by this law. It is his will that we be made eminent in holiness; that we preserve our souls pure and undefiled; that we practise those spiritual duties which are opposed to sensuality; and that, having subdued our unruly appetites, and repressed the inordinacy of those senses which supply matter to the passions, we enter, under the guidance of reason and of the spirit, upon a virtuous course of life.
But, to extinguish the fire of passion, it will be found most efficacious to place before our eyes the evils which are inseparable from its criminal indulgence. Amongst those evils the first is our subjugation to the tyranny of sin: in him who is obedient to the impulse of passion, sin reigns uncontrolled; and hence the admonition of the Apostle: " Let not sin, there fore, reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof." [1] By resisting the ascendancy of the passions, we weaken the power and subvert the tyranny of sin; but by its indulgence \ve expel God from his throne, and introduce sin in his place. Again, concupiscence, as St. James teaches, [2] is the impure source from which flows every other sin: "All that is in the world," says St. John, " is the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life." [3] A third evil of sensuality is, that it darkens the understanding: blinded by passion the sinner deems the objects of criminal desire, whatever they may be, lawful and even laudable. Moreover, concupiscence stifles the seed of divine word, sown in our souls by God, the great husbandman: " Some," says St. Mark, " are sown among thorns; these are they who hear the word, and the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust after other things, entering in, choke the word, and it is made fruitless." [4]
But they who, more than others, are the slaves of concupiscence, and whom, therefore, the pastor will exhort with greater earnestness and assiduity, are those who are addicted to improper diversions, or who immoderately abuse such as are in themselves lawful; and also, merchants, who wish for dearth, and, because they cannot sell at too high, and purchase at too low, a price, cannot bear that others, by engaging in business, contravene their oppressive monopoly. They, too, offend in this particular, who, with a view to gain by buying or selling, wish to see their neighbour reduced to want. Soldiers, also, who thirst for war, in order to enrich themselves with plunder; physicians, who wish for the spread of disease; lawyers, who are anxious for a number of causes and litiga-
