It is almost impossible to decide what St. Paul here means by "bodily exercise." Not that either the phrase or the passage in which it occurs is either difficult or obscure. But the phrase may mean either of two things, both of which make excellent sense in themselves, and both of which fit the context. At the beginning of this chapter the Apostle warns Timothy against apostates who shall "give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils ... forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats." St. Paul has in his mind those moral teachers who made bodily mortifications the road, not to self-discipline, but to self-effacement; and who taught that such things were necessary, not because our bodies are prone to evil, but because they exist at all. To have a body, they held, was a degradation: and such a possession was a curse, a burden, and a shame. Instead of believing, as every Christian must, that a human body is a very sacred thing, to be jealously guarded from all that may harm or pollute it, these philosophers held that it was worse than worthless, fit for nothing but to be trampled upon and abused. That it may be sanctified here and be glorified hereafter,--that it may be the temple of God's Holy Spirit now and be admitted to share the blessedness of Christ's ascended humanity in the world to come,--they could not and would not believe. It must be made to feel its own vileness. It must be checked, and thwarted, and tormented into subjection, until the blessed time should come when death should release the unhappy soul that was linked to it from its loathsome and intolerable companion. It cannot, of course, for a moment be supposed that St. Paul would admit that "bodily exercise" of this suicidal kind was "profitable" even "for a little." On the contrary, as we have seen already, he condemns the whole system in the very strongest terms. It is a blasphemy against God's goodness and a libel on human nature. But some persons have thought that the Apostle may be alluding to practices which, externally at any rate, had much resemblance to the practices which he so emphatically condemns. He may have in his mind those fasts, and vigils, and other forms of bodily mortification, which within prudent limits and when sanctified by humility and prayer, are a useful, if not a necessary discipline for most of us. And it has been thought that Timothy himself may have been going to unwise lengths in such ascetic practices: for in this very letter we find his affectionate master charging him, "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."