on him to assert his dominion over the wild beast—to obey, and conquer, and live. Aye! and though we may have followed other voices, have we not, while following them, confessed in our hearts that all true strength, and nobleness, and manliness was to be found in the other path. Do I say that most of us have had to tread this path and fight this battle? Surely I might have said all of us; all, at least, who have passed the bright days of their boyhood. The clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and heavy; the weak, the cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and passionate of body. The arms and the field have been divers—can have been the same, I suppose, to no two men, but the battle must have been the same to all. One here and there may have had a foretaste of it as a boy; but it is the young man’s battle, and not the boy’s, thank God for it! That most hateful and fearful of all relatives, call it by what name we will—self, the natural man, the old Adam—must have risen up before each of us in early manhood, if not sooner, challenging the true man within[39] us, to which the Spirit of God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.

Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and take up the pledge which was made for you when you were a helpless child. This world, and all others, time and eternity, for you hang upon the issue. This enemy must be met and vanquished—not finally, for no man while on earth, I suppose, can say that he is slain; but, when once known and recognized, met and vanquished he must be, by God’s help, in this and that encounter, before you can be truly called a man; before you can really enjoy any one even of this world’s good things.

---

XXIV.

In the course of my inquiries on the subject of muscular Christians, their wor