s unsuccessfully,
the strong tendencies of a too exuberant animal nature, who strive to
neutralize an influence that unduly oppresses them,--against these,
guilty though they may have been, is not directed the moralist's
unmeasured censure. His reproaches in such cases tend less to condemn
than to awake to a sense of moral responsibility; earnestness in
pointing out remedy and safeguards takes the place of severity against
wilfulness. For he knows that not a few sentences of condemnation
Christ writes on the sands, as He did in a celebrated case, and many an
over-zealous accuser he has confounded, like the villainous Pharisees
whom He challenged to show a hand white enough to be worthy to cast the
first stone.

Evidently such pity and commiseration should not serve to make vice
less unlovely and thus undo the very work it is intended to perform. It
should not have the characteristics of certain books and plays that
pretend to teach morality by exposing vice in all its seductiveness.
Over-sensitive and maudlin sympathy is as ridiculous as it is
unhealthy; its tendency is principally to encourage and spoil. But a
judicious, discreet and measured sympathy will lift up the fallen,
strengthen the weak and help the timorous over many a difficulty. It
will suggest, too, the means best calculated to insure freedom from
slavery of the passions.

The first of these is self-denial, which is the inseparable companion
of chastity; when they are not found together, seldom does either
exist. And by self-denial is here meant the destruction of that eternal
r reference for self, that is at the bottom of all uncleanness, that
makes all things, however sacred, subservient to one's own pleasures,
that considers nothing unlawful but what goes against the grain of
natural impulse and natural appetites. There may be other causes, but
this self-love is a primary one. Say what you will, but one does not
fall from his own level; the moral world is like the physical; if you
are raised aloft in disregard for the laws of truth, you are going to
come down with a thud. If you imagine all the pleasures of life made
for you, and become lawful because your nature craves for them, you are
taking a too high estimate of yourself; you are going before a fall He
who takes a correct measure of himself, gets his bearings in relation
to God, comes to realize his own weak points and several deficiencies,
and acknowledges the obligations such a state of affairs