_congeries_ of flesh and bones, blood and nerves, different from that of every one else, and with desires and impulses driving each of us his own separate way; and he says that a man who sows to this, sows to a thousand tyrants, and can reap no worthy harvest. But he talks of sowing to _the_ spirit; because there is one central moral tendency which for us and for all men is the law of our being, and through reason and righteousness we move in this universal order and with it. In this conformity to _the will of God_, as we religiously name the moral order, is our peace and happiness. [Footnote 31: _Col._, iii, 5.] [Footnote 32: _Gal._, vi, 8.] But how to find the energy and power to bring all those self-seeking tendencies of the flesh, those multitudinous, swarming, eager, and incessant impulses, into obedience to the central tendency? Mere commanding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition in the desires it tries to control. It even enlarges their power, because it makes us feel our impotence; and the confusion caused by their ungoverned working is increased by our being filled with a deepened sense of disharmony, remorse, and dismay. 'I was alive without the law once,'[33] says Paul; the natural play of all the forces and desires in me went on smoothly enough so long as I did not attempt to introduce order and regulation among them. But the condition of immoral tranquillity could not in man be permanent. That natural law of reason and conscience which all men have, was sufficient by itself to produce a consciousness of rebellion and disquietude. Matters became only worse by the exhibition of the Mosaic law, the offspring of a moral sense more poignant and stricter, however little it might show of subtle insight and delicacy, than the moral sense of the mass of mankind. The very stringency of the Mosaic code increased the feeling of dismay and helplessness; it set forth the law of righteousness more authoritatively and minutely, yet did not supply any sufficient power to keep it. Neither the law of nature, therefore, nor the law of Moses, availed to blind men to righteousness. So we come to the word which is the governing word of the Epistle to the Romans,--the word _all_. As the word _righteousness_ is the governing word of St. Paul's entire mind and life, so the word _all_ is the governing word of this his chief epistle. The Gentile with the law of nature, the Jew with the law of Moses, alike fail to achieve righteousness. '_All_ have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.'[34] All do what they would not, and do not what they would; all feel themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, miserable. 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'[35] [Footnote 33: _Rom._, vii, 9.] [Footnote 34: _Rom._, iii, 23.] [Footnote 35: _Rom._, vii, 24.]