culties by placing enijihasis on the sway of rea.s<m in tile .soul, but wliat if the reason itself be as dis- turlied and distorted as the otlier faculties? What if prior to education there are needed regeneration and re|)entaiice — a change afl'ecting a man at the very centre of his personality? 'The Old World knew notliing of Conversion ; instead of an Ecee //omo, they had only some C'Aoicc q/"//crc«/c«. . . . What to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists and Metliodists' (Carlyle, Sartur Jicfiirtus, bk. ii. cli. x.). This is after all the great crux in regard to temperance — not a minute analj'sis of the virtue itself, not a punctilious set of prohibitions and allowances, but ils creation in the regeneration of the total character ; and this can never be effected satisfactorily by crushing the emotions even to purify the intellect. The mind itself must be moved with a nobler passion, and it is because Christ does this that He is the Saviour of men. To those who indulged in wine wherein is profligacy the command is to be tilled with the Spirit — one exalted emotional state is contrasted with another of a ditt'erent quality.
To the regenerated man there remains tlie further question, viz. how his new life can be fostered and developed in a corrupt society and in a soul weak and imperfect. Certain things and states are dangerous, and temperance is thus essential. St. Paul is acutely conscious, for instance, of the danger of sexual lust. Wliat does iyKpareia mean in this respect? Does it in its perfection imply celibacy and virginity? This was the view that ultimately gained ground in the Roman Catholic Church, where the clergy cannot marry ; and some would so read St. Paul in 1 Co 7, but without justification. St. Paul knew that in a city like Corinth it was almost imperative that men sliould marry, because otherwise they could not be con- tinent. But if one can be continent without marriage, then his energies are more at the disposal of Christian service. It is clear that St. Paul is not here preaching celibacy per se as a duty. Continence is above celibacy or above marriage. His theme is the necessity of iyKpdreta. ' But he mentions himself rather than say iy iyKparelq. to show that continence is not a Utopian dream. Pieiius, the Alexandrian commentator in the third century (Jerome, Ej}. 49, Ad Pamm.), is not the last to maintain that the Apostle in this verse preaches celibacy' (T. C. Edwards, 1 Corinthians", London, 18S5, p. 162). To the Apostle marriage with continence is infinitely better than celibacy with concupiscence. Yet we find this view of iyKparaa as celibacy gaining ground in the Church itself till it assumed the form of organized asceti- cism. The Encratites enjoined abstinence from marriage altogether. Tatian {Eus. HE iv. 29) says it is ' corruption and fornication,' <p8opd Kal wopfeia. This attitude is distinctly called a doctrine of demons by St. Paul (1 Ti 4'-'), and was condemned by the Church on the ground of its du.'ilistic basis, but the Church itself enjoined Enciatite ethics on the clergy — without the Encratite foundation — while allowing the laity to be 'temperate' in marrying. The influences which brought this about were the real moral reactions against gross impurity and the consequent contemiit of the marriage state — a contempt utterly alien to the practice and the ideal of Judaism. St. Peter speaks of the chaste conversation of wives, and St. Paul applies to tlie married bishop the qualifica- tion 'temperate' (Tit 1").
The temperance of the NT is thus a demand on all — the celibate for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake is higher morally not because of his celibacy but because of his increased energy in the interests of
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the Kingdom. It ia impossible to conceive St. Paul writing letters and treatises on virginity in the manner of the Fathers. He maintains that lie himself and all Christians have the liberty to lead about a wife as. St. Peter did (1 Co 9''). Although we can see how the rigorous view of iyKpaTcia de- veloped, and can in a .sense justify it, yet this should not blind us to the fundamental ditlerence between it an<l the NT view (see von Dobscluitz, op. cit., p. 259 11'., for an excellent description of this development).
Similarly in regard to wine, animal food, and possessions. When abstinence from these is en- joined on dualistic grounds, then such abstinence is wrong. St. Paul e.xhorts Timothy to drink wine for his stomach's sake, and, even if we do not agree with those who hold that he was here combating total abstinence, yet it is a proof that such abstin- ence may be practised on false grounds. In our own times this question of abstinence from intoxi- cating drinks is the 'temperance' pi-obleni, and those who maintain that this abstinence is impera- tive do so on physiological grounds, on the ground of the tremendous havoc cau.sed by drink, and they can defend it on St. Paul's view that for the sake of the weak brother the strong should avoid the creation of stumbling-blocks (see art. Abstinence).
3. The full Christian ideal of i-iKfa.Tt\.a.. — The locus rlassicus for NT temperance is 1 Co 9. Here the Apostle is dealing with the question of Chris- tian liberty, and he unhesitatingly defends liberty in view of meats and drinks, in view of marriage, and aLso the liberty of the Christian pastor from manual labour because the Church ought to support him. But teni|)erance comes in in the forgoing of these, if need be, for the sake of eft'ectiveness in Christian work. The freeman of Christ is living in a world full of dangers. He has to face customs innocent in themselves but inextricably bound up with sinful temptations ; he has to gain men, steeped in traditions and prejudices, to Christ ; he has to think of brethren less advanced than himself, and he has to remember his own sinful tendencies. He is thus like an athlete with a race to run or a pugilist with an antagonist to knock out. The athlete or the pugilist had to undergo a rigorous training beforehand. For ten months before the actual contest, he was under oath to follow a pre- scribed diet {avayKo<pa.yia) and a strenuous training ((So-Kj/o-is). He had to abstain ' venere et vino' (see Horace, Ars Poetica, 412 It., Epict. Enchir. 3. 5, and VVetstein, in loc). St. Paul applies all this to the Christian, and can illustrate it by his own conduct. The best commentary is 2 Co 6^'^'. It is possible to misunderstand all this impassioned rhetoric of the Apostle and to justify by it not only fasts and restrictions but also positive flagellation and even self-mutilation, but fortunately in Colos- sians the Apostle himself has made this impossible. The a,(pei.5la toO o-ciynaros (Col 2'-^') is not in the Apostle's mind. It is not the material of the body he fights, but the body as the organ of sin, and his disciplining is abundantly furnished by what he has to endure in the pursuit of the great end, viz. gaining others to Christ and self-progress in like- ness to Him. His thorn in the flesh he prays against. He would never manufacture means of pain. Lecky is right in condemning useless self- sacrilice and unnecessary sutt'ering, and St. Paul would never approve of Newman's patient (cf. Map of Life, ed. London, 1901, pp. 56, 57). Men can be temperate on very low grounds.