you look with a spiritual eye. The coarseness has passed away--the
rudeness is no longer seen: there is a refinement in the pleasures.
But if you take the life led by the young men of our country--strong,
athletic, healthy men--it is still the life of the flesh: the
unthinking, and the unprincipled life in which there is as yet no
higher life developed. It is a life which, in spite of its refinement,
the Bible condemns as the life of the sensualist.

We pass on now, to another state of discord--a state in which the soul
is ruined. Brethren, this is a natural result--this is what might have
been expected. The natural man gradually subordinates the flesh, the
body, to the soul. It is natural in the development of individuals, it
is natural in the development of society: in the development of
individuals, because that childlike, infantine life which exists at
first, and is almost entirely a life of appetites, gradually subsides.
Higher wants, higher desires, loftier inclinations arise; the passions
of the young man gradually subside, and by degrees the more rational
life comes: the life is changed--the pleasures of the senses are
forsaken for those of the intellect.

It appears natural, again, in the development of society. Civilization
will subordinate the flesh to the soul. In the savage state, you find
the life of the animal. Civilization is teaching a man, on the
principle of this world, to subordinate his appetites; to rule
himself; and there comes a refinement, and a gentleness, and a
polish, and an enjoyment of intellectual pleasures; so that the man is
no longer what the apostle calls a sensual man, but he becomes now
what the apostle calls a natural man. We can see this character
delineated in the Epistle to the Ephesians. "Then we were," says the
apostle, "in our Gentile state, fulfilling the desires of the flesh