So soon as we begin to
hate anger for its own sake we begin to put it away; but while we only
hate the bad consequences of anger we cleave to its indulgence. So it is
with indolence. We know, perhaps, that we are indolent, and we perceive
that this vice stands in the way of our attaining to many things that
we desire, and we believe that we wish to become diligent, when we are
steadfastly loving a life of indolence, and wishing not for diligence,
but for its rewards. What we suppose to be dislike of indolence is only
dislike of the consequences that indolence brings in its train. So the
drunkard sometimes goes to his grave cheating himself with the idea that
the lust of the flesh binds and enslaves him; and that he really loves
the virtue of temperance, while in truth he is loving sensual indulgence
with all his heart. Possibly temperance reformers might be more
successful in reclaiming such slaves from their sin if they would talk
less of the punishments the drunkard brings upon himself in the shape
of poverty, and disease, and shame, and enlarge more upon the moral
degradation to his own soul which he fastens upon himself both for this
life and the life to come.
We are all of us perpetually liable to gross self-deception by thus
transferring in fancy our love or our hate for the consequences of vices
or virtues to the vices or virtues themselves. If we made this transfer
in fact, we should at once set about gaining the one and putting away
the other; but so long as we believe that sin dwells within us without
our consent and approval we become daily more and more the servants of
sin.
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