He was not in danger of falling because of doubt, for he had had such a wonderful conversion, and such an actual vision of Christ, that he could never, never doubt that, nor does he any where, in any of his epistles, show the slightest wavering in this respect, but he does show that he knew and felt there was danger of being, in some unguarded moment, misled and brought into sin by the appetites of an unmastered body. So, he says in the next verse: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that when I have preached to others, I myself should be lost." He still keeps up the figure of the boxing matches in the games, and says: "The foe I have to contend with is my body," and as the winner in the fist fight of the games beats his foe black, till he cries "enough!" so do I deny my body till it ceases to have any desire or disposition toward the objects of unholy passions, till it meekly gives up, and I feel that I am perfect master, and it is under my feet as it were. When the body is fed and gratified and pampered, its animal appetites and passions are nursed and become strong. So men who live high and eat to gluttony and drink wines and liquors are usually in a perfect strut of sensual passion. I guess that is why the Lord keeps me so poor, and why I have so little to live on and so little to feed on. It is that, by this necessary self-denial, I may keep my poor body down, out of danger of betraying me into sin. David was as great a man in some respects as Paul, he communed with God in the solitudes of Bethlehem's sheep pastures, till he became strong enough to overcome a giant and to put a whole army to flight. He composed most of the Psalms, the most spiritual songs in the world. He withstood all the temptations of honor, and endured, with matchless meekness, the hatred and persecution of Saul, the king (I. Samuel xxiv). But his poor body, with its sensual passions, got the better of him, and he committed the awful sin of adultery. Doubtless, when he had become king, he forgot the self-denial which he practiced when he was a shepherd, and when he was a persecuted and hunted fugitive, and instead of that he lived high, fed high, drank high, and so he fell, and fell very low.