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 a man.  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 honour; who cares for nothing and no one but himself, and filling his own stomach and his own pulse, 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.  I do not mean that you and I here like nothing but what is wrong.  God forbid.  I trust the Spirit of God is with our spirits.  But I mean this:—­That if you could let a child grow up totally without any control whatsoever, I believe that before that lad was twenty-one he would have qualified himself for the gallows seven times over.  Thank God, that cannot happen in England, because people are better taught, most of them at least; and more, we dare not do what we like, for fear of the law and the policeman.

But, if you knew the lives which savages lead, who have neither law outside them to keep them straight by fear, nor the Spirit of God within them to keep them straight by duty and honour, then you would understand what I mean only too well.

Now St. Paul says,—­It is a good thing for a man not to be able to do what he likes.  But there are two ways of keeping him from it.  One is by the law, the other is by the Spirit of God.  The law works on a man from the outside by fear; but the Spirit of God works in a man by honour, by the sense of duty, by making him like and love what is right, and making him see what a beautiful and noble thing right is.