How is that restraining influence to be exercised? There are many ways
by which God, in His providence, can fulfil the prayer. But the way
above all others is by the actual operation upon heart and will and
desires of a divine Spirit, who uses for His weapon the Word of God,
revealed by Jesus Christ, and in the Scriptures. 'The sword of the
Spirit is the Word of God,' and God's answer to the prayer of my text is
the gift to every man who seeks it of that indwelling Power to sustain
and to restrain.

That will keep our passions down. The bubbling water is lowered in its
temperature, and ceases to bubble, when cold is added to it. When God's
Spirit comes into a man's heart, that will deaden his desires after
earth and forbidden ways. He will bring blessed higher objects for all
his affections. He who has been fed on 'the hidden manna' will not be
likely to hanker after the leeks and onions, however strong their smell
and pungent their taste, that grew in the Nile mud in Egypt. He who has
tasted the higher sweetnesses of God will have his heart's desires after
lower delights strangely deadened and cooled. Get near God, and open
your hearts for the entrance of that divine Spirit, and then it will not
seem foolish to empty your hands of the trash that they carry in order
to grasp the precious things that He gives. A bit of scrap-iron
magnetised turns to the pole. My heart, touched by the Spirit of God
dwelling in me, will turn to Him, and I shall find little sweetness in
the else tempting delicacies that earth can supply. 'Keep Thy servant
back from,' by depriving him of the taste for, 'presumptuous sins.'

That Spirit will strengthen our wills. For when God comes into a heart,
He restores the due subordination which has been broken into discord and
anarchy by sin. He dismounts the servant riding on horseback, and