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Is it, then, needful to evince the necessity of a man governing his own temper? Every man acknowledges that all others ought to govern their tempers, and complains of them when they do not. That we may perceive how much it is the duty of every one of us to govern his own temper, let us attend to the ill effects of neglecting to govern it. They are pointed out by an expressive figure in the text: "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls"; he has no security against abandoning himself to every vice. Need I point out minutely the vices to which the indulgence of a contracted and selfish temper naturally leads? The selfish affections are various; they turn to different objects; but it requires the strictest government to prevent a temper founded on the prevalence of any of them from degenerating into the correspondent vice, ambition, or vanity, or avarice, or sensuality, and the love of pleasure. It is still less necessary to enter into a long detail of the detestable vices which spring from a temper founded in a propensity to any of the malevolent passions. They lead to vices which spread misery through society, and which overwhelm the person himself with greater misery than he brings upon those around him. Habitual peevishness, producing fretfulness on every, the slightest, occasion, putting one out of humour with every person and every thing, creating incessant uneasiness to those who are connected with him, eating out the enjoyment of life, is the natural effect of a temper founded on a propensity to anger, though accompanied with the weakest tone of passion. In whatever way our temper most disposes the several passions and affections to exert themselves, it will, without regulation, prove the source of peculiar vices. When the propensity to desire renders the temper keen and eager, if we lay it under no restraint, it must engage us in trifling and vicious pursuits; in respect of the object of our pursuit, whether pleasure, profit, or power, it must render us craving and insatiable, ever unsatisfied with what we have obtained, wishing and plotting for more; and in respect of the means of prosecution, it must render us impetuous and violent, regardless of the bounds of right, impatient of every delay and opposition. Is the opposite propensity to aversion indulged? Everything wears a gloomy aspect, and is viewed on its darkest side: we act as if we were resolved never to be pleased; we search for occasions of disgust, regret, and uneasiness, and we find them in every object; every gentle affection is banished from the breast; discontent, fretfulness, and ill-humour become habitual. The same temper, it may be further observed, will lead a man, with equal readiness, into opposite vices in opposite situations. The same littleness of mind renders a man insolent in prosperity and abject in adversity. That vice, be it what it will, to which our particular temper directly leads us, is an enemy already advanced to the gates of the heart; and if it finds the heart "like a city without walls," it enters at its pleasure; we can make no resistance. But this is very far from being the whole effect of our neglecting to govern our natural temper: the man who ruleth not his spirit does not merely become enslaved to one vice; in consequence of this he is open to every vice. Every ruling sin will require from the man who lives in the indulgence of it the commission of many others for its support, for its gratification, or for disguising and concealing it. But it deserves to be particularly remarked that as soon as the misgovernment of natural temper has subjected a man to one ruling vice, he is no longer proof against even such vices as are in themselves most opposite to that very temper. Every one's observation will supply him with instances of persons who, being engaged in one vicious course, have by it been led into sins most contrary to their nature; with instances of the soft and gentle being brought to act with cruelty; of the benevolent and kind-hearted labouring to bring ruin upon those who happened to stand in the way of some unlawful project; of the generous, in the prosecution of some bad design, stooping to the most sordid actions; of the candid and open betrayed into schemes of artifice, dissimulation, and falsehood; of the timid rushing forward into the most dangerous crimes. Thus the man who abandons himself to that one vice which arises from the corruption of his natural temper is from that moment in danger of every sin. Every predominant vice requires as great a number of other vices to be subservient to it in the course of a wicked life as the ministers whom any tyrant can stand in need of to be the instruments of his cruelty, rapacity, and lusts. By being "like a city without walls," destitute of defence against any sin, he becomes "like a city broken down," reduced to ruins, desolated, uninhabited, and uninhabitable. Can you think without terror of the accumulated guilt of all these vices, and of the punishment to which they must expose you? Possessed and actuated by these emotions, be roused to every exertion for removing the faulty propensity of your nature. While you neglect to govern your natural temper, all your endeavours to avoid or to mortify the vices which spring from it will be but like lopping off a few twigs, which the vigour of the root will enable quickly to grow again, perhaps stronger and more luxuriant than before: it is only by setting yourselves at once to govern it, to rectify all its perversities, that you can lay the axe to the root of the tree, and effectually kill all the branches.

(Alex. Gerard, D.D.)

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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.