Fire, my beloved, is a most valuable, an indispensable agent of the human race. What would we do without it? But fire must remain within bounds. Woe if it overleaps them! Then it becomes a terrible and destructive power! Man's body, likewise, is a great and noble instrument, a fine handiwork of God, with powers for good; but it must remain within its bounds, it must always be kept as a servant in subjection. Woe to man's happiness and the welfare of others when it overleaps its legitimate bounds, and the servant becomes the master, a tyrant, and a destroyer! "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection," says Paul. Our great business as Christians is to learn to control our body, its lusts and desires; to subdue and master it, to bring it into a pure and honorable service, above and beyond its own miserable gratification. "Dearly beloved," writes St. Peter, "I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." Yes, back in the days of Mount Sinai, God voiced His will in words of fire and thunder on stony tablets: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," which means we are to lead a chaste and decent life in word and deed, and each curb, guard, and control the sinful desires of the flesh. Nor is this unchastity, the overstepping of the proper relation between the sexes, the sinful indulgence of man's lower nature, the only temptation that comes from the flesh. From the long list enumerated by the Apostle in his letters we shall select one other. That is _intemperance_, the too free indulgence in stimulating drinks. Nor can it be questioned that a word in this respect is occasionally in place. The history of strong drink is the history of ruin, of tears, and of blood. It is perhaps the greatest curse that ever scourged the earth. Other evils have slain their thousands, but this has slain its tens of thousands. It is simply impossible to picture the crime of which it is the cause. It is the Mississippi among the rivers of wretchedness. It is an evil which is limited to no age, no nation, no sex, no period and call of life. It has taken the poor man at his toil and the rich man in his palace, the statesman in the halls of legislature, and the workingman on the street, the preacher in the pulpit, and the layman in the pew, and plunged them into a common ruin.