One of the greatest virtues or ideals of life promoted by the Boston Unitarians was balance or quiet moderation. They saw balance as a dominant quality of Jesus and they sought it in their own lives. Having taken us through the guarding of our thoughts and our tempers in the last couple of posts, Henry Ware now gets to the appetites."The Religious Discipline of Life" cont...
"...when the Saviour pronounced his benediction on the pure, peaceful, humble-minded, and meek, he taught, not only the great requisite of his spiritual kingdom, but the great secret of human felicity.
When the frame of your mind is thus a constant care, you will find little difficulty in the control of the Appetites. These things are connected together; and, an ascendancy over the former being secured, the subjection of the latter easily follows. But take good heed that it does follow. Do not be thoughtless about it, because you fancy that it will of course accompany a regulated mind. Otherwise it is here that corruption may begin. The enemy will enter at any place, however improbable, which shall be left unguarded. And it only needs that the body become disordered through the immoderate indulgence of the appetites, to raise a rebellion throughout the whole moral system; or, to speak more plainly, this indulgence will create cloudiness of mind, indisposition to thought, activity, and duty, irritability of temper, sluggishness of devotional feeling, and at length a general spiritual lethargy. There can be little doubt, that much of our dullness of apprehension and deadness of feeling on spiritual topics, as well as our strange sensibility to minor trials, is owing to a derangement of the animal economy, which is again owing to want of moderation in gratifying our animal desires...
...' let your moderation be known unto all men.' For temperance is not only the observance of an express injunction, but is essential to that quietness and self-control which should mark the religious character."
Blessings
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