Now the apostolic doctrine is this: "You do not grow strong in body or in mind without discipline and exercise. The same athletic demand is made on your soul." All through the writings of this vigorous, masculine, robust adviser of young men, you find him taking the athletic position. Now he is a boxer: "So fight I not as one that beateth the air." Now he is a runner, looking not to the things that are behind, but to the things before, and running, not in one sharp dash, but, with patience, the race set before him. It is just as athletic a performance, he thinks, to wrestle with the princes of the darkness of this world, as to wrestle with a champion. It needs just as rigorous a training to pull against circumstances as to pull against time. It appears to him at least not unreasonable that the supreme interest of an immortal soul should have from a man as much attention and development as a man gives to his legs, or his muscle, or his wind. {18} VII THE RHYTHM OF LIFE _Matthew_ xiv. 23. One of the most striking passages in modern literature is the paragraph in Mr. Spencer's First Principles, in which he describes the rhythm of motion. Motion, he says, though it seems to be continuous and steady, is in fact pulsating, undulatory, rhythmic. There is everywhere intermittent action and rest. The flag blown by the breeze floats out in undulations; then the branches oscillate; then the trees begin to sway; everywhere there is action and pause, the rhythm of motion. The same law holds good of the conduct of life. Its natural method is rhythmic, intermittent, work alternating with rest, activity and receptivity succeeding one another, the rhythm of life. The steady strain, the continuous uniformity of life, is what kills. Work unrelieved by play, and play unrefreshed by work, grow equally stale and dull. Activity without reflection loses its grasp; meditation {19} without action sinks into a dream. Jesus in this passage had been absorbed in the most active and outward-going ministry; and then, as the evening comes, he turns away and goes up into the mountain and is there alone in prayer.