nsecrated eye. 'Art for Art's sake,' to
quote the cant of the day, has too often meant art for the flesh's
sake. And there are pictures and books, and sights of various sorts,
flashed before the eyes of you young men and women which it is
pollution to dwell upon, and should be pain to remember. I beseech
you all to have guard over these gates of the heart, and to pray,
'Turn away mine eyes from viewing vanity.' And the other senses, in
like manner, have need to be closely connected with God if they are
not to rush us down to the devil.

The body is not only the recipient of impressions. It is the
possessor of appetites and necessities. See to it that these are
indulged, with constant reference to God. It is no small attainment
of the Christian life 'to eat our meat with gladness and singleness
of heart, praising God.' In a hundred directions this characteristic
of our corporeal lives tends to lead us all away from supreme
consecration to Him. There is the senseless luxury of this
generation. There is the exaggerated care for physical strength and
completeness amongst the young; there is the intemperance in eating
and drinking, which is the curse and the shame of England. There is
the provision for the flesh, the absorbing care for the procuring of
material comforts, which drowns the spirit in miserable anxieties,
and makes men bond-slaves. There is the corruption which comes from
drunkenness and from lust. There is the indolence which checks lofty
aspirations and stops a man in the middle of noble work. And there
are many other forms of evil on which I need not dwell, all of which
are swept clean out of the way when we lay to heart this injunction:
'I beseech you present your bodies a living sacrifice,' and let
appetites and tastes and corporeal needs be kept in rigid
subordination and in conscious connection with Him. I remember a
quaint old saying of a German schoolmaster, who apostrophised his
body thus: 'I go with you three times a day to eat; you must come
with me three times a day to pray.' Subjugate the body, and let it be
the servant and companion of the devout spirit.

It is also, besides being the recipient of impressions, and the
possessor of needs and appetites, our instrument for working in the
world. And so the exhortation of my text comes to include this, that
all our activities done by means of brain and eye and tongue and hand
and foot shall be consciously devoted to Him, and laid as a sacrifice
upon