Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other… As a fair and gentle wife, starlike and dovelike, is given to the guardianship of some rude, coarse, uncultured nature, who treads among her sweet feelings as the hoof and the snout deal with flowers in the garden, so it is in this strange husband and wife, the body and the soul; the soul full of sweetness and gentleness, purity and delicacy, and the coarse animal body full of despotism, and swayings and conflicts of cruel passions; and they fare but ill in their wedded life on earth. The body looks down and searches the ground for its delights; the soul looks up, and, like an astronomer, culls treasures from among the stars, and beyond. The body eats and drinks; the soul thinks and feels. The body lives in the world, for the world, and with the world; the soul reaches far away to some higher life whose need it feels — but all is vague, but the wish, but the need. Strange visions rise; but neither to-day does the soul know its origin, nor to-morrow. The picture of beauty and of purity that rose bright in the morning has faded out before night. To-morrow mocks the expectation of to-day. The soul is like a bird caged from the nest, that yet remembers something of its fellows in the forest of green leaves, and in summer days hears snatches of song from far-off fields, and yearns, with all its little life, for that liberty which it has never proved, for that companionship which it so early missed, and for those songs which it never learned to utter, though it strives in broken notes for them-. Once some adventurous hunters, from a ledge of rocks, robbed an eagle's nest of an eaglet. Brought home, he was reared among fowls, that he might perform domestic duty. As he grew, he grew apart from the children of the dunghill, and sat moody in sullen dignity. As his wings secretly grew strong, they were clipped. When on a summer's day, wild in the heaven the hawk screamed, every fowl in the yard ran cowering to shelter; he, with flashing eye and discordant scream, reared himself to fly, but alas! he could not rise. He fell sick. He would have died, if he might. They let him alone. His pinions grew again. They forgot him. He forgot not. The sky was his. The great round of air, without line or bound, was his. And when, one neglectful summer day, all were dozing, from afar up in the sky — so far that none could see, or see only a floating speck — there came down a cry so faint that no ear might hear it-none but an eagle's. Then, with sudden force, all its life beating in its breast, it sprang up. Away from the yard, its fowls, its owners, over the rick and over the barn, over the trees and over the hills, round and round in growing circles, beaten with growing power of wing, the freed eagle sought its fellow, and found its liberty right under the sun! And such, of many and many a soul, sad in bondage, valiant in liberty, has been the history. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. |
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