t or vice,
but '_all_ filthiness of flesh and spirit.' The former, of course,
refers primarily to sins of impurity which in the eyes of the Greeks of
Corinth were scarcely sins at all, and the latter to a state of mind
when fancy, imagination, and memory were enlisted in the service of
evil. Both are rampant in our day as they were in Corinth. Much modern
literature and the new gospel of 'Art for Art's sake' minister to both,
and every man carries in himself inclinations to either. It is no
partial cleansing with which Paul would have us to be satisfied: '_all_'
filthiness is to be cast out. Like careful housewives who are never
content to cease their scrubbing while a speck remains upon furniture,
Christian men are to regard their work as unfinished as long as the
least trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in their
spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised at any moment, but it
is at the peril of the whole sincerity and peacefulness of their lives
if they, in the smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in
deference to the imperfection of their realisation of it.

It must be abundantly clear from our own experience that any such
cleansing is a very long process. No character is made, whether it be
good or bad, but by a slow building up: no man becomes most wicked all
at once, and no man is sanctified by a wish or at a jump. As long as men
are in a world so abounding with temptation, 'he that is washed' will
need daily to 'wash his feet' that have been stained in the foul ways of
life, if he is to be 'clean every whit.'

As long as the spirit is imprisoned in the body and has it for its
instrument there will be need for much effort at purifying. We must be
content to overcome one foe at a time, and however strong may be the
pilgrim's spirit in us, we must be content to take one step at a time,
and to advance by very slow degrees. Nor is it to be forgotten that as
we get nearer what we ought to be, we should be more conscious of the
things in which we are not what we ought to be. The nearer we get to
Jesus Christ, the more will our consciences be enlightened as to the
particulars in which we are still distant from Him. A speck on a
polished shield will show plain that would never have been seen on a
rusty one. The saint who is nearest God will think more of his sins than
the man who is furthest from him. So new work of purifying will open
before us as we grow more pure, and this will l