In fallen man these two inferior sections of
human nature, which together form what Paul calls the Flesh, or that
side of human nature which looks toward the world and time, have taken
possession of the throne and completely rule the life, while the
spirit, the side of man which looks toward God and eternity, has been
dethroned and reduced to a condition of inefficiency and death. Christ
restores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by taking
possession of it by his own Spirit. His Spirit dwells in the human
spirit, vivifying it and sustaining it in such growing strength that it
becomes more and more the sovereign part of the human constitution.
The man ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual; he is led by the
Spirit of God and becomes more and more harmonious with all that is
holy and divine.

The flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss of supremacy. It
clogs and obstructs the spirit and fights to regain possession of the
throne. Paul has described this struggle in sentences of terrible
vividness, in which all generations of Christians have recognized the
features of their deepest experience. But the issue of the struggle is
not doubtful. Sin shall not again have dominion over those in whom
Christ's Spirit dwells, or dislodge them from their standing in the
favor of God. "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor
depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

66. The Pauline Gospel.--Such are the bare outlines of the gospel
which Paul brought back with him from the Arabian solitudes and
afterward preached with unwearied enthusiasm. It could not but be
mixed up in his mind and in his writings with the peculiarities of his
own experience as a Jew, and these make it difficult for us to grasp
his system in some of its details. The belief in which he was brought
up, that no man could be saved without becoming a Jew, and the notions
about the law from which he had to cut himself free, lie very distant
from our modern sympathies; yet his theology could not shape itself in
his mind except in contrast to these misconceptions. This became
subsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as
the watchwords of a party within the Christian Church itself, against
which he had to wage a long and relentless war. Though this conflict
force