Christ the manhood is taken into God. Thou shalt not take from me the blessed message of Holy Communion, which declares that the very human flesh and blood of him who died on the Cross is now eternal in the heavens, and nourishes my body and soul to everlasting life. Thou shalt not, under pretence of voluntary humility and will-worship, tempt me to go and pray to angels or to saints, or to the Blessed Virgin, because I choose to fancy them more tender, more loving and condescending, more loving, more human, than the Lord himself, who gave himself to death for me. If the Lord God, the Son of the Father, is not ashamed to be man for ever and ever, I will not be ashamed to think of him as man; to pray to him as man; to believe and be sure that he can be touched with the feeling of my infirmities; to entreat him, by all that he did and suffered as a man, to deliver me from those temptations which he himself has conquered for himself; and to cry to him in the smallest, as well as in the most important matters-' By the mystery of thy holy 'incarnation; by thine agony and bloody sweat; 'by thy cross and passion; by thy precious death

and burial; by thy glorious resurrection and 'ascension;' by all which thou hast done, and suffered, and conquered, as a man upon this earth of ours, good Lord deliver us!

SERMON XXXVI.

THE BATTLE WITHIN.

(Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1858.)

GALATIANS V. 16, 17.

This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

OES this Text seem to any of

DOES

to understand? It need not be difficult to you; for it does not speak of anything which you do not know. It speaks of something which you have all felt, which goes on in you every day of

your lives.

It speaks of something, certainly, which is very curious, mysterious, difficult to put into words: but what is not curious and mysterious? The commonest things are usually the most curious? What is more wonderful than the beating of your heart; your pulse which beats all day long, without your thinking of it?

Just so this battle, this struggle, which St. Paul speaks of in this text, is going on in us all day long,

and yet we hardly think of it. Now what is this battle? What are these things which are fighting continually in your mind and in mine? St. Paul calls them the flesh and the spirit. 'The flesh,' he says, 'lusts against the spirit, and the spirit ' against the flesh.' They pull opposite ways. One wants to do one thing, and the other the other. But if so, one of them must be in the right, and the other in the wrong. Now, St. Paul says, when these two fall out with each other, the spirit is in the right, and the flesh in the wrong. And, therefore, the secret of life is, to walk in the spirit, and so not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh.

But if so, it must be worth our while to find out which is flesh, and which is spirit in us, that we may know the foolish part of us from the wise. What the flesh is, we may see by looking at a dumb beast, which is all flesh, and has no immortal soul. It may be very cunning, brave, curiously formed, beautiful, but one thing you will always see, that a beast does what it likes, and only what it likes. And this is the mark of the flesh, that it does what it likes. It is selfish, and self-indulgent, cares for nothing but itself, and what it can get for itself.

True, you may raise a dumb beast above that, by taming and training it. You may teach a

Ꮓ

horse or dog to do what it does not like, and give it a sense of duty, and as it were awaken a soul in it. That is very wonderful, that we should be able to do so. It is a sign that man is made in God's likeness. But I cannot stay to speak of that now. I say our flesh, our animal nature, is selfish and self-indulgent. I do not say, therefore, that it is bad: God forbid. God made our bodies and brains, as well as our souls; and God makes nothing bad. It is blasphemous to say that he does. No, our bodies as bodies are good; the flesh as flesh is good, when it is in its right place; and its right place is to be servant, not master. We are not to walk after the flesh, says St. Paul: but the flesh is to walk after the spirit-in English, our bodies are to obey our spirits, our souls. For man has something higher than body in him. He has a spirit in him; and it is just having this spirit which makes him For this spirit cares about higher things than mere gain and comfort. It can feel pity and mercy, love and generosity, justice and honour; and when a man not only feels them, but obeys them, then he is a true man, a christian man: but on the other hand, if a man does not; if he be a man in whom there is no mercy or pity, no generosity, no benevolence, no justice or honor; who cares for nothing and no one but himself, and

a man.

filling his own stomach and his own purse, and pleasing his own brute appetites in some way, what should you say of that man? You would say, he is like a brute beast-and you would say right-you would say just what St. Paul says. St. Paul would say, that man is fulfilling the lusts of the flesh; and you and St. Paul would mean just the same thing. Now, St. Paul says, "The 'flesh in us lusts against the spirit, and the spirit ' against the flesh.' And what do we gain by the spirit in us lusting against the flesh, and pulling us the opposite way? We gain this, St. Paul says, 'that we cannot do the things that we 'would.'

Does that seem no great gain to you? Let me put it a little plainer. St. Paul means this, and just this, that you may not do whatever you like. St. Paul thought it the very best thing for a man not to be able to do whatever he liked. As long, St. Paul says, as a man does whatever he likes, he lives according to the flesh, and is no better than a dumb beast: but as soon as he begins to live according to the spirit, and does not do whatever he likes, but restrains himself, and keeps himself in order, then, and then only, he becomes a true

man.

But why not do whatever we like? Because if we did do so, we should be certain to do wrong.