, "Oh
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?"

We can understand too, surely the famous parable of Plato, the greatest
of heathen philosophers, who says, that the soul of man is like a
chariot, guided by a man's will, but drawn by two horses. The one horse
he says is white, beautiful and noble, well-broken and winged, too,
always trying to rise and fly upward with the chariot toward heaven. But
the other horse is black, evil, and unmanageable, always trying to rush
downward, and drag the chariot and the driver into hell.

Ah my friends, that is but too true a picture of most of us, and God
grant that in our souls the better horse may win, that our nobler and
purer desires may lift us up, and leave behind those lower and fouler
desires which try to drag us down. But to drag us down whither? To hell
at last, says Plato the heathen. To destruction and death in the
meanwhile, says St. Paul.

Now in the text St. Paul explains this struggle--this continual war which
goes on within us. He says that there are two parts in us--the flesh and
the spirit--and that the flesh lusts, that is, longs and struggles to
have its own way against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.
First, there is a flesh in us--that is, a carnal animal nature. Of that
there can be no doubt: we are animals, we come into the world as animals
do--eat, drink, sleep as they do--have the same passions as they have--and
our carnal mortal bodies die at last, exactly as the animals die.

But are we nothing more? God forbid. St. Paul tells us that we are
something more--and our own conscience and reason tell us that we are
something more. We know that to be a man, we must be something more than
an animal--a mere brute--for when we call any one a brute, what do we
mean? That he has lost his humanity, his sense of justice, mercy, and
decency, and given himself up to his flesh--his animal nature, till the
_man_ in him is dead, and only the _brute_ remains. Mind, I do not say
that we are right in calling any human being a brute, for no one, I
believe, is sunk so low, but there is some spark of humanity, some spark
of what St. Paul calls "the spirit," left in him, which may be fanned
into a flame and conquer, and raise and save the man at last--unless he
be a mere idiot--or that most unhappy and brutal of all beings, a
confirmed drunkard.

But our giving way to the same selfish shameless passions, which we see