ires to be--dares in penitence to
say, That righteousness is mine: dares, even when the recollection of
his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking
less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it were with God--"Lord,
Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee."

IX.

_Preached August 4, 1850._

SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT.

"Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of
the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be
filled with the Spirit."--Ephesians v. 17, 18.

There is evidently a connection between the different branches of this
sentence--for ideas cannot be properly contrasted which have not some
connection--but what that connection is, is not at first sight clear.
It almost appears like a profane and irreverent juxtaposition to
contrast fulness of the Spirit with fulness of wine. Moreover, the
structure of the whole context is antithetical. Ideas are opposed to
each other in pairs of contraries; for instance, "fools" is the exact
opposite to "wise;" "unwise," as opposed to "understanding," its
proper opposite.

And here again, there must be the same true antithesis between
drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of this opposition
lies in the intensity of feeling produced in both, cases. There is one
intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by
vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses
from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is
the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the
propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One
degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is our subject for
to-day.

I. The effects are similar. On the day of Pentecost, when the first
influences of the Spirit descended on the early Church, the effects
resembled intoxication. They were full of the Spirit, and mocking
bystanders said, "These men are full of new wine;" for they found
themselves elevated into the ecstasy of a life higher than their
own, possessed of powers which they could not control; they spoke
incoherently and irregularly; to the most part of those assembled,
unintelligibly.

Now compare with this the impression produced upon savage
nations--suppose those early ages in which the spectacle of
intoxication was presented for the first time. They saw a man u