Surely, there must be some way to end this conflict, First, man has taken the matter in hand himself. He has had todo so. The fight makes life a tragedy for sincere souls, It is to be deplored that the easiest way is that taken by many people. It is the ''line of least resistance." That is the way of the nobler -self giving way to the baser. The call of the spirit is drowned out by the Jouder calls of the flesh. The things their "inward man" approves of, faith, purity, love, sacrifice, godliness, need earnest cultivation and self-denial, and so they are set aside, or allowed to die slowly away, in favour of the pleasures of the world, the satisfactions of the moment. Poor Oscar Wilde is the most glaring case I have ever heard of. He let the divine spirit in! him die, and the basest passions run riot, and bitterly he repented of it, I believe. But gross and notorious sinners are not the only ones who take this way. Multitudes, who never come near doing anything that lands them in a court, take this way. You take it, if you forget God, give no time to divine things, that Jesus calls "the things that belong to thy peace." "Broad is the way," as the Lord says, "and many there be that. find it." That isthe obvious, easiest way, yet a: fatal one, But happily, mankind has not always taken this base way out, the submergence of the better self under floods of worldliness. Man has felt that there must be a way to attain to a higher unity in the self. An eFican writer, Professor Perry, has a good illustration of this yearning of human nature. He asks why it was that knights of old confessed their sins to priests before going into battle. He gives a very deep reason: he says it was not that they were afraid to die,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.