The word "flesh" here does not mean the body, but the lower or sensitive part of the soul in which the fleshly appetites reside. Our Lord is warning St. Peter of the necessity of prayer in order to meet the temptation which was coming upon him, and He tells him not to trust to the willingness of his spirit, that is, his good intentions and resolutions, because he had an inferior nature which might easily be excited to evil, and which in the hour of temptation might, without a special grace of God, drag his will into sin. {381} What our Lord is declaring, then, is the fact attested by universal experience, that there are in the heart of man two conflicting principles--inordinate passion on one side, and reason and grace on the other. This truth, though so well known, touches our happiness and salvation too closely not to possess at all times an interest and importance for each one of us; and I propose, therefore, to make it the subject of my remarks this morning. In the first place, then, what is the source and nature of the conflict thus indicated by our Lord? Whence does it arise? How does it come to pass that there are those two principles within us? How does it happen that every child of man finds himself drawn, more or less, two contrary ways, toward virtue and toward vice, toward God and toward the devil, toward Heaven and to-ward Hell? The answer commonly given is, that this conflict we feel within us comes from the fall, that it is the fruit of original sin. But the fall, according to the Catholic doctrine, introduced no new principle into our nature, infused no poison into it, and deprived it of none of its essential elements. We must look farther back, then, than the fall for the radical source of this conflict; and we find it in the very essential constitution of our nature. Man, in his very nature, is twofold. He is created and finite, yet he has a divine and eternal destiny. He has a body and a soul, and therefore he must have all the passions which are necessary to his animal and sensible life, as well as the intellectual and moral powers which are necessary to his spiritual life. Here, then, we have, in the very idea of man's nature, the possibility of a conflict. We have two different principles, which it is conceivable might come into collision. Man's appetites and passions, no less than his reason, are given to him by God, are good, are necessary, but since his appetites and passions are blind principles, it is conceivable that they _might_ demand gratifications which would not be in accordance with his reason and spiritual nature. {382} As human nature was at first constituted by the Almighty, any actual collision between these parts was prevented by a gift, which is called "the gift of integrity," a gift which was no essential part of our nature, but was conferred on it by mere grace, and which bound together the various powers of the soul in a wondrous harmony, so that the movements of passion were always