p. 63 | To Subdue the Flesh by Rev. W. F Robertson

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1859

To Subdue the Flesh.

By Rev. W. F Robertson

DOES a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower passions, let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will he become their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the flesh is not extinction of those feelings, but by the elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character, sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur, spiritual nobleness,—and then, just as the strengthening of the whole constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision, but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them.—Rev. W. F Robertson.