ay in which St. Paul speaks of sin, in this and
other passages--as a force or power greater than the individual man,
which possesses him and dominates him through his lower nature--and
especially by the consciousness which he betrays of its 'beguiling'
power, that he believed in personal agencies of evil. 'Our wrestling
is not against flesh and blood (merely), but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this
darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places[10].' Particularly it is in the deceitfulness of sin that St.
Paul realizes what one must call the personal character of the evil
power[11]. He is profoundly conscious that {269} there makes itself
heard in temptation a voice as of a person which lies to us, as it lied
to Eve, as to the true character of the suggested action; and when we
have been deceived and seduced, and have done the deed, and its real
character has become apparent, 'the tempter' turns round upon us with
the grin of unmasked malevolence. Is there any one who can really
dissociate from his own spiritual experience this idea of the tempter
and the deceiver?

We do well to remember in reading this passage the meaning of the
recurring word 'law.' In modern English it has come to mean the
principle or method observable in anything. Such and such a thing, we
say, exhibits such and such a law, i.e. acts constantly in such and
such a way. It is natural therefore for us to read this meaning into
the word in verse 21, as in the Authorized Version, 'I find then a law,
that, when I would do good, evil is present with me,' i.e. I find that
this is what constantly happens. But the Greek word, as used in the
Old and New Testaments, does not bear any meaning like this[12]. It
means always the {270} injunction or set of injunctions imposed by a
law-giver. In this passage it is used seven times of the divine
(Mosaic) law. When the will accepts this law and would impose it on
the lower nature, it becomes 'the law of the mind,' i.e. the law which
the mind enjoins (verse 23). With this conflicts 'the law of sin,'
'the different law,' which sin or the evil one would impose and which
has gained actual sway 'in our members.' We must then interpret verse
21 in harmony with this use, and taking the sentence to be a broken
one, translate, as the margin of the Revised Version, 'I find then, in
regard of the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is p