THE BATTLE WITHIN
(Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1858.)
Galatians, v. 16, 17. This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye
shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are
contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that
ye would.
Does this text seem to any of you difficult to understand? It need
not be difficult to you; for it does not speak of anything which you
do not know. It speaks of something which you have all felt, which
goes on in you every day of your lives. It speaks of something,
certainly, which is very curious, mysterious, difficult to put into
words: but what is not curious and mysterious? The commonest
things are usually the most curious? What is more wonderful than
the beating of your heart; your pulse which beats all day long,
without your thinking of it?
Just so this battle, this struggle, which St. Paul speaks of in this
text, is going on in us all day long, and yet we hardly think of it.
Now what is this battle? What are these things which are fighting
continually in your mind and in mine? St. Paul calls them the flesh
and the spirit. 'The flesh,' he says, 'lusts against the spirit,
and the spirit against the flesh.
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