Christianity and Temperance.
St. Paul here contrasts two kinds of excitement. God does not love the sort of languid and lazy being which nothing stirs, and nothing stimulates. Excitement has its place in the Christian system. That flow and rush of the natural spirits which is so dear to youth and health, finding expression alike in the games of the boy and in the recreations of the man, is not in itself a wrong thing. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ makes room for it.
I. St. Paul introduces the particular precept of the text in subordination to two others. One is the precept of charity, and the other is the precept of purity. St. Paul knew how to keep the proportion of Christian morals as well as of Christian doctrines, and never misplaced and never exaggerated in the enumeration or in the enforcement of particular vices and virtues. At last he reaches the text, which comes in as an example of that circumspect and accurate walking, "not as fools, but as wise," which suits those who live, as we all live, in evil days, that is, days of great peril, arising out of strong temptation: "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess."
II. In fighting against drunkenness, we fight against vice of every kind and of all kinds. The war which lames one antagonist is virtually the war against a legion. We must be filled with the Spirit. Of all the treasures of the Church in this age surely this is the greatest and the most prevailing; and surely of all the crimes of this age the greatest is not the disregard of Christ the Propitiator, but the neglect of the Holy Ghost the Comforter. How faint and intermittent are our prayers for the Spirit; how feeble and how vacillating is our hold upon His presence. We would force ourselves back into the days of Christ's flesh, or at the best we would sit for ever at the foot of the cross or at the mouth of the rich man's tomb, closed, sealed, and watched. We will not live in the light of the great Easter, and we will not bask in the sunshine of the great Pentecost, and therefore it is that we live this half-life, downcast, disconsolate, and sin-bound, and never listen to the experience which tells of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus setting us free from the law of sin and death.
C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 308.
References: Ephesians 5:18. J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. x., p. 589; Homilist,3rd series, vol. viii., p. 163.Ephesians 5:19. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 305; Ibid., Church of England Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 121; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 56.