(3) The body is the medium of expression of the soul — There are many faces about this world in which prayer and patience and humility have, by God's grace, wrought a beauty which may be the nearest approach that can be seen in this life to the glory of the Resurrection — the glory that is to be revealed in those who shall then be wholly penetrated and transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord. So intimate is the bond between soul and body that it has naturally come to be employed as the very type of immediate union or alliance ; and the poet has illustrated that, in a well-known line, when he writes that God is very near to us: "Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." Indeed every day we see new instances in which, owing to this indissociable connection, the soul has written its own character on the body. We are usually right in judging a man by his facial expression. His nature peeps out in the glance of
1 Dora Grcenwell, Liber Humanitatis, 8.
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 197
his eye, the touch of his hand, the tone and inflection of his voice, his unstudied and unconscious gestures and attitudes, even the peculiarities of his gait.
^[ " Olalla," I said, " the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love. What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the soul cleaves ; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's signal ; and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the footstool and foundation of the highest." 1
U There are times when, all unconsciously to itself, the soul declares what it really is, what is its true nature — its love or hate, esteem or scorn. Perhaps it is some articulate utterance that is the medium of revelation, as when Browning says : —
He replied — The first word I heard ever from his lips, All himself in it — an eternity Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth 0' the soul that then broke silence — " I am yours."
Or, perhaps, the silence remains unbroken, but the disclosure is made, nevertheless, with
Each soul a-strain Some one way through the flesh — the face, an evidence 0' the soul at work inside.
When a man has " base ends and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes a-squint." But when his soul is true and pure, "his eye is as clear as the heavens," and his face grows "one luminosity " ; — though, in the former case, he may never suspect that the question will be put to him, " Why is thy countenance fallen ? " And in the latter also it might truthfully be said, He " wist not that the skin of his face shone." 2
New burnisht Joys !
Which finest Gold and Pearl excell ! Such sacred Treasures are the Limbs of Boys
In which a Soul doth dwell: Their organized Joints and azure Veins More Wealth include than the dead World contains.3
(4) The body is a medium of Divine service. — A large part of our usefulness and influence is due to passing bodily changes, of which we may be unconscious, but which others feel. Our eyes
1 R. L. Stevenson, Olalla. 2 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 94.
8 Trailer ne, Poems of Felicity, 2.
198 THE BODY FOR GOD
brighten with the good news we have to tell; our face beams with a smile ; " there's music in our very foot " when we are on an errand of love. When one "lifts" on us "the light of his countenance" we learn the sacred service of the body. Love and joy, hope and fear, pleading earnestness, remonstrant indigna- tion— all the deep emotions of spiritual life lay the body under tribute. Think of the power of the orator in glance and gesture as well as in word; think of the dear faces and the musical voices of a happy household; think of beauty of expression, lovely when it animates fair features, but infinitely more touching when it glorifies a plain face. These are but casual illustrations of the various ways in which the body lends itself to the divinest ministries of life.
If Charles Kingsley once said, " There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect of personal health. I could not do half the good I do, if it were not for the strength and activity some consider coarse and degrading."
If One personal characteristic of Bishop Wilkinson stands out very strongly all through his life — the exquisite sensitiveness and delicacy of his bodily frame. He was not a man who could rough it ; he was singularly dependent upon rest, upon the refined appointments of life; his house, his dress, his apparatus were always those of a wealthy and almost aristocratic fine gentleman. I think he showed his greatness and his simplicity by not troubling about this, and accepting these as the conditions under which he could do his work best ; he did not plan for them or set any affected value upon them — he was simply unconscious of them, while they somehow enhanced his mysterious grace, and showed how the arts of courtly living and the pomps and vanities of the world may be consecrated to the service of God.1