d weight of such unaccomplished intentions.

Nothing so certainly weakens a man as a multitude of resolves that he
knows he has never fulfilled. They weaken his will, burden his
conscience, stand in the way of his hopes, make him feel as if the
entail of evil was too firm and strong to be ever broken. 'O wretched
man that I am!' said one who had made experience of what it was to will
what was good, and not to find how to perform, 'who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?' It is an awful thing to have to carry a
corpse about on your back. And that was what Paul thought the man did
who loaded his own shoulders with abortive resolutions, that perished
in the birth, and never grew up to maturity. Weak and miserable is
always the man who is swift to resolve and slow to carry out his
resolutions.

III. And now let me say a word before I close about how this universal
and grave disease is to be coped with.

Well, I should say to begin with, let us take very soberly and
continually into our consciousness the recognition of the fact that the
disease is there. And then may I say, let us be rather slower to resolve
than we often are. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that
thou shouldest vow and not pay.' The man who has never had the
determination to give up some criminal indulgence--say, drink--is
possibly less criminal, and certainly less weak, than the man who, when
his head aches, and the consequences of his self-indulgence are vividly
realised by him, makes up his mind to be a teetotaller, and soon
stumbles into the first dram-shop that is open, and then reels out a
drunkard. Do not vow until you have made up your minds to pay. Remember
that it is a solemn act to determine anything, especially anything
bearing on moral and religious life; and that you had far better keep
your will in suspense than spring to the resolution with thoughtless
levity and leave it with the same.

Further, the habit of promptly carrying out our resolves is one that,
like all other habits, can be cultivated. And we can cultivate it in
little things, in the smallest trifles of daily life, which by their
myriads make up life itself, in order that it may be a fixed custom of
our minds when great resolves have to be made. The man who has trained
himself day in and day out, in regard to the insignificances of daily
life, to let act follow resolve as the thunder peal succeeds the
lightning flash, is the man who, if he is moved to