(5) Kemember also the prospects of the body. The body has its own real share in the hopes and promises that cluster round the name of Jesus. The heathen said — our modern heathen say still — the body will perish like the animals ; what matters it how we treat it ? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Nay, replies Christian faith, there is a second and nobler chapter in the story even of this frail tenement we here inhabit, which sheds back its light upon the chapter we are living in now. God, who raised up Jesus, shall in due time also quicken your mortal bodies.
1 A. 0. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 129.
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 199
2. Consider the dishonour of the body.
(1) It has an inevitable tendency to usurp the place of the soul. — The body is always trying to slip this domination of the powers that are above it, and become uppermost, and if this is allowed to take place the whole life is turned upside down, and man is degraded.
(2) The body has propensities which, if unduly indidged, waste and ruin life. — Where lies the gravity and guilt of sins like gluttony, intemperance, or lust in any form? In this, for one thing, that they give the body the upper hand. The only right and safe thing is that the body shall always serve. Any attempt to reverse the Divine law of our nature, that that part of us which is akin to God must rule, means a loss of true manhood and inevitable suffering. The drunkard reeling down the street is, in too many cases, a man whose body has already become the grave of a lost spirit.
Tf The sovereignty of the conscience, and the control of reason, and the force of will exist in us to control appetite. The horse, when it is held in with a firm hand in a tight rein, is a noble sight, but if the rider or driver lets the rein slip from his fingers, the very mettle and force of the brute are what lead to destruction. And so the very frailty of the body becomes the means of greater destruction unless it is held in by the superior faculties of our nature.1
II.
The Temple of the Body.
Under the Old Dispensation of Law, God had a temple for His people, but under the .New Dispensation of Grace, He has His people for a temple.
1. The Temple was the one place in all the land of Israel which was entirely dedicated to God's use. It existed solely for His service, and from all secular purposes and work it was com- pletely separated. God's ownership was recognized in every detail of its construction and service — it was truly the House of God. So is it with all those who are called now to be His temples.
^[ I remember once learning, as I was standing in the magnifi-
1 J. Stalker.
200 THE BODY FOR GOD
cent Cathedral at Cologne, that Napoleon had stabled his cavalry horses in its chapel, and the very thought seemed to darken and profane the whole place. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and if any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy.1
2. The Temple thus dedicated to God was handed over to His possession in that wonderful prayer of Solomon. The body of a Christian believer holds another tenant than his human spirit ; a Divine presence is within him, at once his glory and his power. And that Divine presence confers an unutterable sacredness upon his body. Just as he who commits sacrilege not only desecrates the material fabric, but also dishonours the God whose shrine it is; as he who performs unseemly acts in a temple not only defiles the stones and buildings, and wounds the spirits of the worshippers, but also profanes the worship of the Deity : so he who injures his body offends the Holy Ghost ; he who sins against his body, not only degrades himself, but is a transgressor against the indwelling God.
If They who sin against the body defile their temple, and dis- honour Him who dwells in them. Some do so from an excessive devotion to the cares of this life, which, however necessary they may be to give practical directness and homely reality to spiritual character, are sure to exhaust him who lives wholly or even mainly in and for them. Some do it by an undue addiction to social excitements, which are to the intellect and imagination what stimulants are to the appetites. How many strong men, men of practical genius and large common sense ; how many genial- spirited men, with rare gifts of sympathy and social qualities, are lost to the labours of our churches from these causes ! 2
3. The Temple offered to God became His indeed by His acceptance of the offering. — This was sealed by fire from heaven and by the glory of the Lord filling the house (2 Chron. vii. 1). Henceforth, in a peculiar sense, that place became God's dwelling- place, and a type for all time of the spiritual temples which He purposes that all His people should be. No mere emotion, no strength of resolution, no strenuous striving to live aright, can ever take the place of God Himself in His people. This is the secret which alone transforms, "We will come unto him, and make our abode with him " (John xiv. 23).