foiled by Satan. To have every
appetite of the body under the rule and regulation of the Holy Spirit
appears to some needless, to others too difficult. And yet it must be,
if the body is to be holy, as God's temple, and we are to glorify Him in
our body and our spirit. The first approaches of sin are made through
the body: in the body the complete victory will be gained.

What Scripture teaches as to the intimacy of the connection between the
body and spirit, physiology confirms. What appear at first merely
physical transgressions leave a stain and have a degrading influence on
the soul, and through it drag down the spirit. And on the other side,
spiritual sins, sins of thought and imagination and disposition, pass
through the soul into the body, fix themselves in the nervous
constitution, and express themselves even in the countenance and the
habits or tendencies of the body. Sin must be combated not only in the
region of the spirit: if we are to perfect holiness, we must cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh _and_ spirit. 'If through the
Spirit ye do make dead the deeds of _the body_, ye shall live.' If we
are indeed to be cleansed from sin and made holy unto God, the body, as
the outworks, must very specially be secured from the power of Satan
and of sin.

And how is this to be done? God has made very special provision for
this. Holy Scripture speaks so explicitly of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
that communicates holiness, in connection with the body. At first sight
it looks as if the word, your bodies, were simply used as equivalent to,
your persons, yourselves. But as the deeper insight into the power of
sin in the body, and the need of a deliverance specially there, quickens
our perception, we see what is meant by the body being the temple of the
Holy Spirit. We notice how very specially it is of sins in the body that
Paul speaks as defiling God's holy temple; and how it is through the
power of the Holy Ghost in the body that he would have us glorify God.
'Know ye not that _your body_ is the temple of the Holy Ghost: glorify
God therefore, in the power of the Holy Spirit, in _your body_.' The
Holy Spirit must not only exercise a restraining and regulating
influence on the appetites of the body and their gratification, so that
they be in moderation and temperance,--this is only the negative
side,--but there must be a positively spiritual element, making the
exercise of natural functions a service of holy j