(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.

Does this text seem to any of you difficult 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 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.