The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Corinthians — Section 117

soul's life just as directly depend upon the food with which it is no11rished. Would you get more good work out of your souls? '£hen you must feed them better. Do you expose your souls to much peril? 'l'hen you must improve and increase their food. We may speak of the soul's life as beingfaith and love, and as havina for its natural expression worship and work. Then the soul's food which we provide must bear, in the most direct and efficient way, on these four things. Here is a most practical problem for each one of us to solve in our daily life-What will nourish into the fullest health and strength my soul's faith and my soul's love? What will strenathen the soul's brain and heart for holy worship, for prayer and praise, and the soul's mbuscle and nerve for holy work? As life unfolds there come to us a.II times of special stress and strain. Business has its unusual anxieties. Home has its unusual cares. Decisions of grave importance have to be made, and we too easily forget at such times that we need better soul-food; we must be oftener at the secret sources of spiritual nourishment; we must find out how strong they can become who eat of the tree of life, who partake of that Bread of life which satisfies, and that "flesh and blood" which a.re "meat indeed and drink indeed." ll Notra!SH THE BODY-LIFE HOW WE HAY, rr IS WEARING DOWN TO DECAY AND DEATH. "The outward man yerishes." "The fashion of this world passeth away." All the feeding, all the nourishing, all the fresh air, cannot keep the bodily powers working over-long; for soon the sight grows dim, and the bearing fails, and the taste palls, and the hands tremble, and the breath goes hard, and the limbs totter, and then the golden bowl is broken at the fountain, and man goeth to his long home, aud the mourners go about the streets. There is a fixed limit beyond which the body cannot go. None of us can with impunity exert ourselves beyond the limits of our physioal strength, for gradually, as the years pass on, our vital force is lowered, our recuperative power fo.ils, the body ie really decaying and wasting down to helplessness and death. But why shoultl we trouble because we cannot feed these bodies of ours into a strength that sb11ll resist disease u.nd old age, and make our years last through all the genero.tions? 'l'bey are not ua. They are but the machinery, the agency, the sphere, of our sublime moral trial. They may last no longer than is needed for the perfecting of the trial. I sh11ll not want this frail body, with its limited sensos and relations, nor shall I want this "ower sin-burdened earth," when God sees that my moro.l trial is over; when he ho.s found out, by this practical experiment, what I really am. I can see thorn both po.ss away, and euter God's spiritual and incorruptible body-tho glorified counterpart of this body I now ho.ve--which is fashioned akin to the "new heavens o.nd new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." III. NOURISH THE SOUL-LIFE, AND rr WILL GROW ON FOR EVER. For there 11re no forces that can touch the regenerate soul to destroy it. "I give unto thorn etemnl life," He said who brought life and immortality to light hy His gospel, "11ud they sbnll never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Law, So.t11n, sin, temp- tation, worldly atmospheres, death, and hell cannot hurt the soul whose vittllity is well uourishod nod mo.int.Lined. 'l'o.ke food for the body, nod its service is soon spcut. To.ke food for the soul, and its service never can be spent; it becomes a. permuueot element of good; it has gone to the making of ch11racter, which deo.th h11s no power to touch. There are, indeed, varieties of religious experience, ups nnd downs of religious feeling. We may encrust our lives with worldliness, we may feed our souls witll nothing but the luxuries of human pleasure, and if we do so we must suffer, and bitterly suffer. Great diseases and calamities may come to ue as cleansing nnd correcting processes. But God w'.ll not let the soul-growth be permanently hindered. If we will not make the soul thrive by the food of truth, and duty, and worship, nod pro.yor, a.nd fellowship, then he will make it thrive by the medicine of po.in, and distress, and humiliation, and beree.vement, and loss; but thrive and grow it sho.11. "'l'bo inward man [shall be] renewed day by day." IV. THE VERY WEARING DOWN, BUPFERINO, DEOATING, AND DYING OP THE BODY-LIFE ARE HADE AOENTB IN NOURlBHING THE SOUL'S LIFE. St. Paul goes on from our text to say, "For our light affliction . . . worketh for us a. far more exceeding o.nd eternal weight of glory." How bright o.ud hopeful that bruised, worn, suffering apostle o.lwo.ys was I Ho even found it in his heart to glory in bis infirmities, because, the weaker he was, the more of Christ's µower must rest on him and work through him. '!'he outwiml  116 THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIIE CORINTHIANS. [on. 1v. 1........1B.