y
enters in. In time of war, everything yields to the defence of the
walls. It is often because the believer does not know the importance of
keeping the walls defended, keeping the body sanctified, that he fails
in having the soul and spirit preserved blameless. Or it is because he
does not understand that the guarding and sanctifying of the body in all
its parts must be as distinctly a work of faith, and as directly through
the mighty power of Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit, as the
renewing of the inner life, that progress in holiness is so feeble. The
rule of the city we entrust to Jesus: but the defence of the walls we
keep in our own hands; the King does not keep us as we expected, and we
cannot discover the secret of failure. It is the God of peace _Himself_,
who sanctifies wholly, who must preserve spirit and soul _and body_
entire and without blame. The tabernacle with its wood, the temple with
its stone, were as holy as all included within their walls: God's holy
ones need the body to be holy.

To realize the full meaning of this, let us remember how it was through
the body sin entered. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food,'
this was the temptation in the flesh; through this the soul was reached,
'it was a delight to the eyes;' through the soul it then passed into the
spirit, 'and to be desired to make one wise.' In John's description of
what is in the world (1 John ii. 15), we find the same threefold
division, 'the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life.' And the three temptations of Jesus by Satan correspond exactly:
he first sought to reach Him through the body, in the suggestion to
satisfy His hunger by making bread; the second (see Luke iv.) appealed
to the soul, in the vision of the kingdoms of this world and their
glory; the third to the spirit, in the call to assert and prove His
Divine Sonship by casting Himself down. Even to the Son of God the first
temptation came, as to Adam and all in the world, as lust of the flesh,
the desire to gratify the natural and lawful appetite of hunger. We
cannot note too carefully that it was on a question of eating what
appeared good for food that man's first sin was committed, and that that
same question of eating to satisfy hunger was the battleground on which
the Redeemer's first encounter with Satan took place. It is on the
question of eating and drinking what is good and lawful that more
Christians than are aware of it are