But why not do whatever we like? Because if we did do so, we should be certain to do wrong. I do not mean that you and I here like nothing but what is wrong. God forbid. I trust the Spirit of God is with our spirits. But I mean this:--That if you could let a child grow up totally without any control whatsoever, I believe that before that lad was twenty-one he would have qualified himself for the gallows seven times over. Thank God, that cannot happen in England, because people are better taught, most of them at least; and more, we dare not do what we like, for fear of the law and the policeman. But, if you knew the lives which savages lead, who have neither law outside them to keep them straight by fear, nor the Spirit of God within them to keep them straight by duty and honour, then you would understand what I mean only too well. Now St. Paul says,--It is a good thing for a man not to be able to do what he likes. But there are two ways of keeping him from it. One is by the law, the other is by the Spirit of God. The law works on a man from the outside by fear; but the Spirit of God works in a man by honour, by the sense of duty, by making him like and love what is right, and making him see what a beautiful and noble thing right is. Now St. Paul wants us to restrain ourselves, not from fear of being punished, but because we like to do right. That is what he means when he says that we are to be led by the Spirit, instead of being under the law. It is better to be afraid of the law than to do wrong: but it is best of all to do right from the Spirit, and of our own free will. Am I puzzling you? I hope not: but, lest I should be, 1 will give you one simple example which ought to make all clear as to the struggle between a man's flesh and his spirit, and also as to doing right from the Spirit or from law. Suppose you were a soldier going into battle. You see your comrades falling around you, disfigured and cut up; you hear their groans and cries; and you are dreadfully afraid: and no shame to you. It is the common human instinct of self-preservation. The bravest men have told me that they are afraid at first going into action, and that they cannot get over the feeling. But what part of you is afraid? Your flesh, which is afraid of pain, just as a beast is of the whip. Then your flesh perhaps says, Run away--or at least skulk and hide--take care of yourself. But next, if you were a coward, the law would come into your mind, and you would say, But I dare not run away; for, if I do, I shall be shot as a deserter, or broke, and drummed out of the army. So you may go on, even though you are a coward: but that is not courage. You have not conquered your own fear--you have not conquered yourself--but the law has conquered you.