e flesh, the servants of sin, bringing
forth fruit unto death," but now obeying the new form of doctrine
delivered unto them, with renewed hearts and changed conduct, it
is written, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin;
but the spirit is life because of righteousness;" that is, If
Christian truth reign in you, the body may still be tormented, or
powerless, owing to your previous bad habits; but the soul will be
redeemed from its abandonment to error and vice, and be assured of
pardon and immortal life by the witnessing spirit of God.

The apostle likewise says unto them, "If the Spirit of God dwell
in you, it shall also quicken your mortal bodies." This remarkable
expression was meant to convey a thought which the observation of
common facts approves and explains. If the love of the pure
principles of the gospel was established in them, their bodies,
debilitated and deadened by former abandonment to their lusts,
should be freed and reanimated by its influence. The body to a
great extent reflects the permanent mind and life of a man. It is
an aphorism of Solomon that "a sound heart is the life of the
flesh." And Plotinus declares, "Temperance and justice are the
saviors of the body so far as they are received by it." Deficiency
of thought and knowledge, laziness of spirit, animality of habits,
betray themselves plainly enough in the state and expression of
the physical frame: they render it coarse, dim, and insensible;
the person verges towards the condition of a clod; spiritual
things are clouded, the beacon fire of his destiny wanes, the
possibilities of Christian faith lessen, "the external and the
insensate creep in on his organized clay," he feels the chain of
the brute earth more and more, and finally gives himself up to
utter death. On the other hand, the assimilation of Divine truth
and goodness by a man, the cherishing love of all high duties and
aspirations, exert a purifying, energizing power both on the flesh
and the mind, animate and strengthen them, like a heavenly flame
burn away the defiling entanglements and spiritual fogs that fill
and hang around the wicked and sensual, increasingly pervade his
consciousness with an inspired force and freedom, illuminate his
face, touch the magnetic springs of health and healthful sympathy,
make him completely alive, and bring him into living connection
with the Omnipresent Life, so that he perceives the full testimony
that he shall never die. For, w