Or, again, we are to deny ourselves as Christ denied himself. But what
are the limits and the purpose of this self-denial? Am I to carry on an
indefinite warfare against the body, which you say that God has given
me, and to crush the physical for the sake of the spiritual element?
What is the line between the spirit which is of God, and the body which
is hopelessly corrupt? All sound reasoning prescribes a training with
the given purpose of bringing the instincts of the individual into
harmony with the interests of the whole social organism. Theology trying
to lay down an absolute law sometimes encourages the extremes of
asceticism, sometimes it inclines to antinomianism; and sometimes
sanctions the condonation of sin in consideration of acts of
humiliation.
We are to resign ourselves to God's will, say theologians, but what is
God's will? If it is the inevitable, then theology falls in with free
reason. But if God's will be, as theologians maintain, something which
we are at liberty to resist or to obey, then resignation implies our
ignoble yielding to evils which might be extirpated.
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