Church--association for reciprocated strength; they were thus taught
the inevitable result of the indulgence of the vice. The missionaries
of temperance went through the country contrasting the wretchedness
and the degradation and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic
comfort, and the health, and the regular employment of those who were
masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave up the
tyranny of the present for the hope of the future--so far they lived
by faith.

Brethren, I do not say that this was a high triumph for the principle
of faith; it was in fact, little more than selfishness; it was a high
future balanced against a low present; only the preference of a future
and higher physical enjoyment to a mean and lower one. Yet still to be
ruled by this influence raises a man in the scale of being: it is a
low virtue, prudence, a form of selfishness; yet prudence _is_ a
virtue. The merchant, who forecasts, saves, denies himself
systematically through years, to amass a fortune, is not a very lofty
being, yet he is higher, as a man, than he who is sunk in mere bodily
gratifications. You would not say that the intemperate man--who has
become temperate in order, merely to gain by that temperance honour
and happiness--is a great man, but you would say he was a higher and a
better man than he who is enslaved by his passions, or than the
gambler who improvidently stakes all upon a moment's throw. The
worldly mother who plans for the advancement of a family, and
sacrifices solid enjoyments for a splendid alliance, is only _worldly_
wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence there is the
exercise of a self-control which raises her above the mere giddy
pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self-control is the weakness
of our nature--to restrain, to wait, to control present feeling with a
large foresight, is human strength.