which he has, like other animals, fight against the law of his mind,
and when he wishes to do good, make him do evil. Now how is this?
The flesh is not evil; a man's body can be no more wicked than a
dumb beast can be wicked. St. Paul calls man's flesh sinful flesh;
not because our flesh can sin of itself, but because our sinful
souls make our flesh do sinful things; for, he says, Christ came in
the likeness of sinful flesh, and yet in him was no sin. The pure
and spotless Saviour could not have taken man's flesh upon him if
there was any sinfulness in it. The body knows nothing of right and
wrong; it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be,
says St. Paul. And why? Because God's law is spiritual; deals with
right and wrong. Wickedness, like righteousness, is a spiritual
thing. If a man sins, his body is not in fault; it is his spirit;
his weak, perverse will, which will sooner listen to what his flesh
tells him is pleasant than to what God tells him is right; for this,
my friends, is the secret of the battle of life. We stand between
heaven and earth. Above is God's Spirit striving with our spirits,
speaking to them in the depths of our soul, shewing us what is
right, putting into our hearts good desires, making us long to be
honest and just, pure and manful, loving and charitable; for who is
there who has not at times longed after these things, and felt that
it would be a blessed thing for him if he were such a man as Jesus
Christ was and is?--Above us, I say, is God's Spirit speaking to our
spirits, below us is this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoke
to Eve's, saying to us, "This thing is pleasant to the eyes--this
thing is good for food--that thing is to be desired to make you
wise, and to flatter your vanity and self-conceit." Below us, I
say, is THIS world, tempting us to ease, and pleasure, and vanity;
and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up the third part of man--
his SOUL and WILL, set to choose between the voice of God's Spirit