Oh pitiable sight!  The most pitiable sight in the whole world, a human soul dead and rotten in sin!  It is a pitiable sight enough, to see a human body decayed by disease, to see a poor creature dying, even quietly and without pain.  Pitiable, but not half so pitiable as the death of a human soul by sin.  For the death of the body is not a man’s own fault.  But that death in life of sin, is a man’s own fault.  In a Christian country, at least, it is a man’s own fault, if he goes about the world, as I have seen many a one go, having a name to live, and yet dead in trespasses and sins, while his soul only serves to keep his body alive and moving.  How shall we escape this death in life?  St. Paul tells us, ’If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’

Through the Spirit.  The Spirit of God and of Christ.  Keep that in mind, for that is the only way, the right way, to mortify and kill in us these vices and passions, which, unless we kill them, will kill us.  The only way.  For men have tried other ways in old times, do try other ways now:  but they fail.  I could mention many plans which they have tried.  But I will only mention the one which you and I are likely to try.

A young man runs wild for a few years, as young men are too apt to do:  but at last he finds that ill-living does not pay.  It hurts his health, his pocket, his character.  He makes himself ill; he cannot get employed; he has ruin staring him in the face, from his wild living.  He must mend.  If he intends to keep out of the workhouse, the gaol, the grave, he must mortify the deeds of the body.  He must bridle his passions, give up lying about, drinking, swearing, cheating, running after bad women:  and if he has a strong will, he does it from mere selfish prudence.  But is he safe?  I think not, as long as he loves still the bad ways he has given up.  He has given them up, not because he hates them, because he is ashamed of them, because he knows them to be hateful to God, and ruinous to his own soul:  but because they do not pay.  The man himself is not changed.  His heart within is not converted.  The outside of his life is whitewashed; but his heart may be as foul as ever; as full as ever of selfishness, greediness, meanness.  And what happens to him?  Too often, what happened to the man in the parable, when the unclean spirit went out of him, and came back again.  The unclean spirit found his home swept and garnished:  but empty.  All very neat and respectable:  but empty.  There was no other spirit dwelling there.  No good spirit, who could fight the unclean spirit and keep him out.  So he took to himself seven other spirits worse than himself—­hypocrisy, cant, cunning, covetousness, and all the smooth-shaven sins which beset middle-aged and elderly men; and they dwell there, and so does the unclean spirit of youth too.