An appetite is a good and excellent thing.  To eat and drink with relish and satisfaction is a sign of good health, one of the precious boons of nature.  And the tendency to satisfy this appetite, far from being sinful, is wholly in keeping with the divine plan, and is necessary for a fulsome benefiting of the nourishment we take.

On the other hand, the digestive organism of the body is such a delicate and finely adjusted piece of mechanism that any excess is liable to clog its workings and put it out of order.  It is made for sufficiency alone.  Nature never intended man to be a glutton; and she seldom fails to retaliate and avenge excesses by pain, disease and death.

This fact coupled with the grossness of the vice of gluttony makes it happily rare, at least in its most repulsive form; for, be it said, it is here question of the excessive use of ordinary food and drink, and not of intoxicants to which latter form of gluttony we shall pay our respects later.

The rich are more liable than the poor to sin by gluttony; but gluttony is fatal to longevity, and they who enjoy best life, desire to live longest.  ’Tis true, physicians claim that a large portion of diseases are due to over-eating and over-drinking; but it must be admitted that this is through ignorance rather than malice.  So that this passion can hardly be said to be commonly yielded to, at least to the extent of grievous offending.

Naturally, the degree of excess in eating and drinking is to be measured according to age, temperament, condition of life, etc.  The term gluttony is relative.  What would be a sin for one person might be permitted as lawful to another.  One man might starve on what would constitute a sufficiency for more than one.  Then again, not only the quantity, but the quality, time and manner, enter for something in determining just where excess begins.  It is difficult therefore, and it is impossible, to lay down a general rule that will fit all cases.

It is evident, however, that he is mortally guilty who is so far buried in the flesh as to make eating and drinking the sole end of life, who makes a god of his stomach.  Nor is it necessary to mention certain unmentionable excesses such as were practiced by the degenerate Romans towards the fall of the Empire.  It would likewise be a grievous sin of gluttony to put the satisfaction of one’s appetite before the law of the Church and violate wantonly the precepts of fasting and abstinence.

And are there no sins of gluttony besides these?  Yes, and three rules may be laid down, the application of which to each particular case will reveal the malice of the individual.  Overwrought attachment to satisfactions of the palate, betrayed by constant thinking of viands and pleasures of the table, and by avidity in taking nourishment, betokens a dangerous, if not a positively sinful, degree of sensuality.  Then, to continue eating or drinking after the appetite is