uld 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.

Now St. Paul wants us to restrain ourselves, not from fear of being
punished, but because we like to do right