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No man can be said to have attained complete rule over his own spirit who has not under his habitual control the tenor of his thoughts, the language of his lips, and motions of lust and appetite, and the energy of his passion. This shows you at once the extent, and the division of our subject.

I. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE THOUGHTS. After all that has been written on the subject of self-command, the regulation of the thoughts has seldom drawn the attention of moralists. On the authority of silly maxims like these, that thought is free as air, that no one can help what he thinks, innumerable hours are wasted in idle reveries without the suspicion of blame. The time which we fondly supposed to be merely wasted in doing nothing may have been easily employed in mischievous imaginations, and thus what was considered as lost simply is found to be abused. When we reflect also that every licentious principle, every criminal project, and every atrocious deed is the fruit of a distempered fancy, whose rovings were originally unchecked till thoughts grew into desires, desires ripened into resolves, and resolves terminated in execution, well may we tremble at discovering how feeble is the control over our imaginations which we have hitherto acquired. We do not say that Caesar, brooding over his schemes of ambition in his tent, was as guilty as Caesar passing the Rubicon and turning his arms against his country; but we do say that licentiousness of thought ever precedes licentiousness of conduct; and that many a crime which stains human nature was generated in the retirement of the closet, in the hours of idle and listless thought, perhaps over the pages of a poisonous book, or during the contemplation of a licentious picture.

II. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE. "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." This will not appear an extravagant assertion when we consider how numerous are the vices in which this little member takes an active part. If we consider these vices of the tongue in the order of their enormity, we shall see how easily one generates another. Talkativeness, the venial offspring of a lively, not to say an unrestrained, fancy, hardly rises to a fault till it is found that he "who talks incessantly must often talk foolishly, and that the prattle of a vain and itching tongue degenerates rapidly into that foolish talking and jesting which, as an apostle says, are not convenient. If for every idle, unprofitable, false or calumniating word which men shall speak they shall give an account in the day of judgment, what account shall those men render whose conversation first polluted the pure ear of childhood, first soiled the chastity and whiteness of the young imagination, whose habitual oaths first taught the child to pronounce the name of God without reverence, or to imprecate curses on his mates with all the thoughtlessness of youth, but with all the passion and boldness of manhood?

III. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ANIMAL APPETITES. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." For how humiliating is the consideration, enough, indeed, to make us weep with shame, that man, the noblest work of God on earth, the lord of this lower world, that this noble creature should suffer himself to fall into the hands of the grovelling mob of appetites, and to be fettered by base lusts which ought to be his slaves — that this ethereal spirit should be wasted in the service of sensuality, and this intelligence, capable of mounting to heaven, be sunk and buried in the slime and pollution of gross and brutal pleasures!

IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. Not to be in a passion is generally the amount of the notion which the world entertains of self-command. In the broad scheme of gospel ethics, the opposite to anger is meekness; and meekness is no narrow or superficial virtue. The meek man of the gospel is the very reverse of those who act the most bustling and noisy part on the theatre of human life. He finds himself in a world where he will be oftener called to suffer than to act. He is not ambitious, because he sees little here worth ambition. Humility is the gentle and secret stream which runs through his life and waters all his virtues. To the government of the passions the principal prerequisite is the restriction of the desires; therefore, as he expects little from the world he will not often quarrel with it for the treatment he receives.

(J. S. Buckminster.)

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KJV: He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.

WEB: Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without restraint.