thing at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the
world--a thing in my heart and yours: to be struggled against, not so
much in the case of others, as in the silent battle to be done within
our own souls. Pass we on now to consider--


II. The victory of faith.

Faith is a theological expression; we are apt to forget that it has
any other than a theological import; yet it is the commonest principle
of man's daily life, called in that region prudence, enterprise, or
some such name. It is in effect the principle on which alone any human
superiority can be gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle
as faith in worldly matters, differing only in its object: it rises
through successive stages. When, in reliance upon your promise, your
child gives up the half-hour's idleness of to-day for the holiday of
to-morrow, he lives by faith; a future supersedes the present
pleasure. When he abstains from over-indulgence of the appetite, in
reliance upon your word that the result will be pain and sickness,
sacrificing the present pleasure for fear of future punishment, he
acts on faith: I do not say that this is a high exercise of faith--it
is a very low one--but it _is_ faith.

Once more: the same motive of action may be carried on into manhood;
in our own times two religious principles have been exemplified in the
subjugation of a vice. The habit of intoxication has been broken by an
appeal to the principle of combination, and the principle of belief.
Men were taught to feel that they were not solitary stragglers against
the vice; they were enrolled in a mighty army, identified in
principles and interests. Here was the principle of the