cken his
consciousness in the assurance of the favor of God and of eternal
being is personified as "the Spirit," "Life," "Righteousness,"
"the Law of God," "the Law of the Inward Man," "Christ," "the Law
of the Spirit of Life in Christ." Under the first class of terms
are included all the temptations and agencies by which man is led
to sin, and the results of misery they effect; under the second
class are included all the aspirations and influences by which he
is led to righteousness, and the results of happiness they insure.
For example, it is written, in the Epistle to the Galatians, that
"the manifest works of the flesh are excessive sensuality,
idolatry, hatred, emulations, quarrels, heresies, murders, and
such like." Certainly some of these evils are more closely
connected with the mind than with the body. The term "flesh" is
obviously used in a sense coextensive with the tendencies and
means by which we are exposed to guilt and degradation. These
personifications, it will therefore be seen, are employed with
general rhetorical looseness, not with definite logical exactness.

It is self evident that the mind is the actual agent and author of
all sins and virtues, and that the body in itself is unconscious,
irresponsible, incapable of guilt. "Every sin that man doeth is
without the body." In illustration of this point Chrysostom says,
"If a tyrant or robber were to seize some royal mansion, it would
not be the fault of the house." And how greatly they err who think
that any of the New Testament writers mean to represent the flesh
as necessarily sinful and the spirit as always pure, the following
cases to the contrary from Paul, whose speech seems most to lean
that way, will abundantly show. "Glorify God in your body and in
your spirit, which are his." "Know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost?" "Yield not your members as instruments
of unrighteousness unto sin, but as instruments of righteousness
unto God." "That the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our
mortal flesh." "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God." It is clear that the author of these
sentences did not regard the body, or literal flesh, as
necessarily unholy, but as capable of being used by the man
himself in fulfilling the will of God. Texts that appear to
contradict this must be held as figures, or as impassioned
rhetorical exclamations. We also read of "the lusts of the mind,"
the "fleshly mind," "