n
he refuses to respond to those spiritual influences by which Christ
besets him, and by means of which the soul is moulded into the likeness
of God.

3. A full presentation of this subject would involve a reference even to
the physical powers which form an integral part of man and witness to his
eternal destiny.

(1) The very body is to be redeemed and sanctified, and made an
instrument of the new life in Christ. The extremes of asceticism and
self-indulgence, both of which found advocates in Greek philosophy and
even in the early Church, have no countenance in scripture. Evil does
not reside in the flesh, as the Greeks held, but in the will which uses
the flesh for its base ends. Not mutilation but transformation, not
suppression but consecration is the Christian ideal. The natural is the
basis of the spiritual. Man is the Temple of God, every part of which is
sacred. Christ claims to be King of the body as of every other domain of
life. The secret of spiritual progress does not consist in the
unflinching destruction of the flesh, but in its firm but kindly
discipline for loyal service. It is not, therefore, by {63} leaving the
body behind but by taking it up into our higher self that we become
spiritual. As Browning says,

'Let us cry all good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now
Than flesh helps soul.'

Without dwelling further upon the physical elements of man, there are
three constituents or functions of personality prominent in the New
Testament which claim our consideration, reason, conscience and will. It
is just because man possesses, or _is_ mind, conscience and will, that he
is capable of responding to the life which Christ offers, and of sharing
in the divine character which he reveals.

(2) The term _nous_, or reason, is of frequent occurrence in the New
Testament. Christianity highly honours the intellectual powers of man
and accords to the mind an important role in apprehending and entering
into the thoughts and purposes of God. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind,' says
Jesus. Many are disposed to think that the exercise of faith, the
immediate organ of spiritual apprehension, is checked by the interference
of reason. But so far from faith and reason being opposed, not only are
they necessary to each other, but in all real faith there is an element
of reason. In all religious feeling, as in morality, ar