^ It is a matter of great interest, and even awe, to me, to observe how the nobler feelings can exist in their intensity only where the whole nature, the lower too, is intense also ; and how that which is in itself low and mean becomes sublimated into something that is celestial. Hence, in the highest natures I suppose goodness will be the result of tremendous struggle ; just as the " bore," which is nothing in the Thames, becomes a con- vulsion on the Ganges, where the waters of a thousand miles roll like a sea to meet the incoming tide of the ocean.^
1. What was St. Paul's attitude to the body ?
(1) It was not the pagan attitude of worship. — This attitude is perhaps best illustrated by the ancient Greeks. Their worship of the body took tv/o forms — the worship of beauty and the worship of physical strength. Their worship of beauty is a commonplace to every one who knows anything whatever about the nation whose sculpture is the admiration and despair of later artists. With them the artistic feeling was not a luxury of the wealthy,
^ S. D. Gordon. ' F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 215.
ROMANS XII. I 213
but was interwoven with the life of the whole people. The most beautiful women of Greece were as famous as its greatest men. Their worship of physical strength was shown especially by the place given to athletics in the great national festivals, such as the Olympian Games. These games were not a mere sporting meeting, but a sacred celebration. The winner was considered to reflect immortal glory upon the city which bare him. He returned home in triumphal procession ; he received a distinc- tion which might be compared to our conferring of the " freedom " of a city ; a statue was erected in his honour ; and sometimes his exploits were celebrated in the loftiest poetry. So essential a part of Greek life were these games that chronology was based upon them, the years being reckoned by Olympiads.
^ To-day there is among us much of this old pagan worship. Witness the " religion of the ballet," the portraits of professional beauties in the shop windows, and the extolling of sensuous charms in much popular modern poetry. Witness, too, the exaggerated language that is used about the elevating influence of art ; as though the salvation of society from sin and misery were in mere picture-galleries; as though the criminal classes would cease to be criminal if presented with season tickets for the Eoyal Academy. Nor can we deny the existence of a wide- spread worship of physical strength. In recent years we have seen the revival of the prize-fight and the canonization of St. Slavin, These be thy gods, 0 Israel. These are the heroes whose names stand first on the modern bead-roll of fame. And even health and innocent sports have been degraded by excessive admiration. Games which used to be played for amusement have now become partly a science and partly a trade.^
(2) It was not the pseudo-Christian attitude — that the body is the seat of all evil. — Heresy at Colosse took the form of hostility to the body as a physical organism. Some members of the Church there hated the body instead of the evil heart of unbelief, and so became ascetics, injoiing the body and starving it. Hence St. Paul's rebuke of those things which " have a show of wisdom in will- worship, and humility, and severity to the body ; but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh." This tendency was developed still further under the monastic system. One man lived for fifty years in a subberranean cave, which was his way of
» H. W. Horwill.
214 THE BODY FOR GOD
hiding his light under a bushel. Some buried themselves up to the neck in the burning sands of the desert. Some slept on bundles of thorns. Some bound themselves to jump about on one leg. Another forced his body into the hoop of a cart wheel, and remained in that position for ten years. Another, Saint Simeon Stylites — the most conspicuous example of a man's making himself a fool for Christ's sake — is said to have kept himself alive for thirty years on the top of a column, and, when too weak to stand any longer upright, to have had a post erected on it to which he was fastened by chains. The monks of later days did not go to such extremes, though they wore hair clothes, and in many other ways developed considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of discomfort. In the Middle Ages there might have been seen on the Continent long processions of " Flagellants " travelling from country to country, weeping as they went, singing penitential hymns, and applying the scourge to their naked backs. And they found that all this did not destroy sin.
•[{ This contempt for the body which St. Paul rebuked among the Colossians has not yet died out of the Church. We are constantly speaking about the value of souls, and forget sometimes that these souls are in bodies. How often we sneer at the body as though it were not worth attention! But great indeed is the mistake of those who think they glorify God by sneering at or maltreating the body, which is one of the noblest products of His skill. Would you compliment an inventor by destroying his machine, by pulling it to pieces either literally or meta- phorically ? ^