5. Stout as Captain Self-denial was, and notable alarms and some brisk execution as he did upon the enemy, yet he must meet with some brushes himself; indeed, he carried several of the marks of such brushes on his face as well as on some other parts of his body. If I had read in his history that Young Captain Self-denial had left his mark upon his enemies, I would have said, Well done, and I would have added that I always expected as much. But it is far more to my purpose to read that he had not always got himself off without wounds that left lasting scars both where they were seen of all, and where they were seen and felt only by Self-denial himself. And not Self-denial only, but even Paul, in our flesh, and with like passions with us, had the same experience and has left us the same record. 'I keep my body under': so our emasculated English version makes us read it. But the visual image in the masterly original Greek is not so mealy-mouthed. I box and buffet myself day and night, says Paul. I play the truculent tyrant over a lewd and lazy slave. I hit myself blinding blows on my tenderest part. I am ashamed to look at myself in the glass, for all under my eyes I am black and blue. If David, after the matter of Uriah, had done that to himself, and even more than that, we would not have wondered; we would have expected it, and we would have said, It is no more than we would have done ourselves. But that a spotless, gentle, noble soul like Paul should so have mangled himself,--that quite dumfounders us. If Paul, then, who, touching the righteousness which is in the law, was blameless, had to handle himself in that manner in order to keep himself blameless, shall any young man here hope to escape temptation without such blows at himself as shall leave their mark on him all his days? Nay, not only so, but after Self-denial had thus exercised himself and subdued himself, still his enemy sometimes got such an advantage over him as left him as his history here describes him. All which is surely full of the most excellent heartening to all who read, in earnest and for an example, his fine history.