affection, of love for family and native land, implanted in the heart by God, are intermingled with selfishness, which, the more it loves its own and its belongings, the more it hates what lies beyond its nearer or more distant boundaries.

The whole sphere of human existence is not more pervaded by the soul than by the selfishness which cleaves to it; its centre, however, is that inmost point of the soul, the self, or ego. The chief seat of sin is the soul, the ego; this proposition must be decidedly maintained by a Christian system of 'morals in opposition to that widespread Manichæan-like view which refers sinfulness chiefly to the somatic or to the sensual,1 and righteousness or virtue to the spiritual side of his nature, thus changing the ethic contrast into a natural one, a proceeding by which the soul seeks to excuse and justify itself at the expense of the body. Sin, according to its idea and nature, must be indigenous where righteousness is; if, then, the latter, as true love, as the outcome of the Spirit of truth and love, has its seat in the best and highest powers of the soul, in the reason, heart, and will, sin too clings to the same; for as a defection of true love it is a fault of the very same spiritual faculties which ought to be filled thereby, and as a selfish affection it consists in the circumstance that the human spirit, separating itself from its centre in God, makes itself its own centre. Hence it is inherent in the mind as mental obscurity, in the reason as false philosophy and self-deification, in the understanding as falsehood and unbelief, in the will as wilfulness in the heart as self-love and selfish desire.2 Such spiritual selfishness may be combined, when it enters upon a self-chosen worshipping of the angels, with a suppression and mortification of the somatic sensuality (apeidía owμatos), nay, it can make this its highest merit, while yet it is the more

1 Comp., on the other hand, Nitzsch, System der Christlichen Lehre, § 108,

note 2.

* Hi defectus et inclinationes non sunt proprie sentientis potentiæ (sensuousness) sed superiorum, mentis et voluntatis, et tamen sequitur etiam ingens àražía in inferioribus viribus.—Melanchthon, Loci, a. 1543, de pecc. orig.

D

unchristian in proportion as it rises in such self-chosen righteousness, so that ordinary sensual sinners, just because sin occupies with them a more external position, and is, as not cleaving so directly to the ego, more easily perceived and put to shame, may precede these spiritual selflings (Matt. xxi. 31). Such self-righteous ascetics are vainly puffed up in the mind of the flesh (Col. ii. 18), which plainly enough shows that the scriptural expression flesh is by no means equivalent to the modern one of sensuality. On the contrary, where the word flesh is used, in malam partem, in contrast to the spirit, or the Holy Spirit (Gal. v. 17), it means the whole earthly sinful nature of man,1 to which belongs not merely the body, but also the soul, the reason, and the will, in so far as they are turned from God, alienated from His Holy Spirit, entangled in the service of the creature, whether subject or object (Col. ii. 3). Conversely, the idea of the spirit does not refer only to the soul, but to the whole man, whose spirit, together with his soul and body, is to be sanctified, and if not spirit, to become spiritual, so that Scripture speaks of a spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 44, vi. 19) just as it does of fleshly souls. Among the fruits of the flesh (Gal. v. 20) are enumerated those

2

1 Even where this ethic contrast is not predominant, as e.g. John i. 14, still áp does not therefore denote merely the body as bodily sensuality, but the earthly human nature in general, unless another flesh is expressly designated, as in 1 Cor. xv. 39.

* Melanchthon, Loci Theol. a. 1521, loc. de vi peccati: Sophista vocant carnem adpetitum sensitivum (Sinnlichkeit) obliti phraseos scripturæ. Neu enim corpus seu partem hominis sed totum hominem, tam animam quam corpus scriptura voce carnis signat, et quoties cum spiritu confertur, significat optimas naturæ humanæ ac præstantissimas vires citra spiritum sanctum.-Comp. Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xiv. c. 2-5. Specially interesting is the reference c. 2, that according to Scripture both the Epicureans, qui animum bonum in corporis voluptate, and the Stoics, qui summum bonum in animo ponunt, secundum carnem vivere, and that further, both carnalitates and animositates are opera carnis. See also Luther On the Enslaved Will, Walch, Part xviii. p. 2352 sqq., and among moderns especially, Müller, die Lehre von der Sünde, i. p. 166 sqq.

3 Sicut spiritus carni serviens non incongrue carnalis, ita caro spiritui serviens recte appellabitur spiritalis, non quia in spiritum convertetur sed quia spiritui summa obtemperandi facilitate subdetur.-Augustine's above-quoted work, I. xiii. c. 20.

which belong to the soul (idolatry, etc.), and among the fruits of the spirit those which belong to the body, e.g. chastity. Flesh and spirit, used antithetically with regard to man, have always an ethical character, while the contrast of body and soul has a physical one; in the former case they are only abstract terms for the more concrete contrast of the natural and the spiritual man (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15), or of the old and new man (Eph. iv. 22-24; Col. iii. 9 sqq.), by which are understood, not the higher and lower portions of human nature, but in both instances the whole man, in so far as he serves either the law of God or sin. No flesh, i.e. no man, must glory before God, nor seek to justify his soul, i.e. himself, at the cost of his sensuous nature, which was created by God,1 for before the law all the world, and by no means only the material world, is guilty (Rom. iii. 19); on the contrary, sin, as a moral incongruity, is essentially of mental origin.2 Ambition, which descends through the various degrees of spiritual pride and arrogant self-satisfaction down to worldly vanity and petty self-conceit, is that form of selfishness which, as directly referable to the ego, to the personality of man, is most of a spiritual nature. The ego, the subject therein, arbitrarily exalts itself before God or man, and fixes itself, its thought and will, as a self-chosen centre both for itself and others. Personality as the ego is the central point of human existence, and as essential to it as revolution around itself to a planet;

2

1 1 Comp. Augustine, cap. v.: Non igitur opus est, in peccatis vitiisque nostris ad Creatoris injuriam carnis accusare naturam, quæ in genere atque ordine suo bona est; sed deserto Creatore bono, vivere secundum carnem, sive secundum animam, sive secundum totum hominem, qui constat ex anima et carne (unde et nomine solius animæ et nomine solius carnis significari potest) eligat vivere. Only blind ignorance can reproach Augustine in his later days with Manichæism.

2 To those who recognise sin only on its sensual side, only as inobedientia inferiorum virium hominis, the words of the Apology, p. 53, apply: Leviores morbos in natura hominis agnoscit, graviores morbos præcipua vitia naturæ humanæ pugnantia proprie cum prima. tabula Decalogi, non agnoscit. Comp. p. 55: Concupiscentia non tantum corruptio qualitatum corporis est, sed etiam prava conversio ad carnalia in superioribus viribus.

the planet on this account revolves subserviently round its centre, the sun, and gives forth his light, not its own. The egoism of ambition desires, however, to overstep that subservient position assigned by God to every creature, and even to the most exalted spirits by God (Heb. i. 13), and in the maintenance of which consists their true honour (Jude 6). He who seeks his own honour, however, desires not to occupy this position of service, like the planet, but to be as the fixed star, which shines by its own light and moves only around itself; to have his light and life, his wisdom and righteousness in himself; to ascribe to himself the honour due to God, and to say of himself what is fitting to God alone: I am my own master. Self-deification,-the wish to be as God (Gen. i. 3, 5; comp. 2 Thess. ii. 4),—whether in great things or small, this is, consciously or unconsciously, the aim of ambition, hence is it the first sin against the first commandment, and all arrogant conduct is an abomination to God (Luke xvi. 15). A rrogance, when flattered, feels itself gratified, though not satisfied; when, on the other hand, it is resisted, and reacts against the obstacles to its satisfaction, it produces those diabolical sins-hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, envyings, murders (Gal. v. 20). Whoever reflects what mighty and persistent forces show themselves in the manifestation of these sins must perceive how erroneous it is to define sin as only a weakness of human nature, which is to make virtue its strength, and so to leave only a difference of degree between sin and virtue. Selfishness does not so much diminish the natural powers of man as, on the contrary, give them a wrong direction; hence we find by no means only weak sinners, but also strong ones, as e.g. the mighty Nimrod.

Self-exaltation may manifest itself in a proud contempt of the world and an intensive (stoical) limitation to self, but it can also pass into a covetousness extensively diffusing itself in the desire for conquest or acquisition. Selfishness, discon

tented with the poverty and emptiness of self, then extends from the subject to the object, from the personality to the objectivity, which the wilfulness of egoism would have for its own possession, or over which it desires to rule at will. It is not sinful to possess or to rule over the property bestowed by God; this is, on the contrary, man's earthly calling, but this is corrupted by self-will in possession, and by selfish desires for what God has not bestowed, whence arise both thirst of power and avarice, which as love of the world, loves the world more than God (1 John ii. 15), and does not so much freely rule and possess its good things as is ruled and possessed by them. From the mighty conqueror to the common miser this sin passes down in many forms, which vary according to the variableness of the attractive object. The objective may, especially when it is of only a material nature like riches, become so predominant as to make avarice stronger than ambition; this is the case with sordid covetousness, to which the love of honour is opposed, without therefore becoming a virtue; on the contrary, we have here one form of selfishness opposing another, a state of things quite implied by their discordant character and tendency to variance. The selfish greed, which desires to have all itself, is still the root of all evil, whether it be the greed of wealth or honour. In its insatiableness-which the more it has the more it desires, because passion, in spite of its self-delusion, never finds in its wrong paths that which it desires-it devours itself, and brings forth, both when its wishes are advanced and when they are thwarted, many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition (1 Tim. vi. 9 sq.).1

From objective desire selfishness turns back to subjective enjoyment, and the love of pleasure appears together with covetousness, or even in opposition thereto. As the latter desires pleasant objects, so the former craves after agreeable

1 Qui perverse amat cujus libet naturæ bonum, etiamsi adipiscatur, ipse fit in bono malus et miser meliore privatur.-Aug. de civit. Dei, cap. c. lxii. 8.