which Peter just touches without expanding. A
sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh
had had enough of time given to it,--had not God a right to the rest?
The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the
readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they
not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our
wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible
flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is
characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to
that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America
and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased, and
so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless
luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become
more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and
earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day
for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in
all things belonging to 'the flesh.'

If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the
world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the
idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared
with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to
do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship.
The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing
to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is,
perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar;
but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from
intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or
consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and
so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make
common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after
Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to
laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.

Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the
blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will
vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of
those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other,
life everlasting.

The