Be sober

(...)

'Things seen  and temporal', the pleasures, the riches, the honours of this world, are apt to intoxicate the mind. Men under their supreme influence are regulated more by imagination and appetite than by conscience and reason. What is present and sensible,  occupies the whole mind. What is unseen and future, is overlooked and forgotten, and treated as if it had no existence. Time is everything, eternity is nothing. 

This is mental intoxication; and sobriety, in opposition to this, is the sound estimate which enlightened conscience and reason form of the comparative value of things seen and unseen, things temporal and eternal, with a habitual state of feeling and action corresponding to that estimate. 

He is sober who reckons that the ever enduring holy happiness which can be found only in possessing the favour, and being conformed to the image of God, is of more true value to man than all else which the created universe contains; that the certainty of attaining the greatest earthly good is too dearly purchased by the slightest hazard of losing this happiness; that no sacrifice, no suffering,  is to be much counted on if necessary in order to its attainment; and that what has the tendency to secure this, cannot be a matter of very much importance to a being like man. Such man shows a mind free from intoxication. He judges of things as they really are. His maxims are obviously the words of truth and soberness. God is more excellent than the creature, the soul is more valuable than the body. Heaven is better than earth, far better than hell. Time is shorter than eternity. 

 Excerpt from 'The Christian's Great Enemy',

 John Brown

pp.36-37

Bold emphasis mine