2. " To glorify " God is to do Him honour, to exalt, to magnify, to praise Him. How can we glorify God in our bodies ?
(1) We glorify God in our bodies by a clear, direct recognition that the body is His shrine, His temple. " Now the body," says St. Paul, " is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." This implies a strenuous mental rally back to elemental principles whenever the body presumes to make its imperious demands. It implies certain times of soul-quietude when we affirm, with strong conviction, "lam a manifestation of God. My body is His shrine, His temple, the theatre of His operation. If my body beguiles me into lust, anger, selfishness, unkindness to others, I am not merely making myself an objec-
1 J. I. Vance, Tendency, 88. a Canon J. G. Simpson.
204 THE BODY FOR GOD
tionable nuisance, but I am guilty of sacrilege, of something akin to blasphemy against the God who dwells within me."
(2) We glorify God in our bodies by disciplining the body so that we gain the victory of self-possession. By far the best, the surest, the happiest, verification of St. Paul's great claim must be made by each man for himself in the effort of obedience ; in the hidden discipline of life ; through pain and toil and fear, it may be, yet, by the grace of God, not without some earnest of a victory whose faintest, briefest forecast is better than all the pleasures of compromise — the victory of self-possession for the glory of God. It is pitiful to imagine how much of strength and liberty and joy is being missed or marred day after day by the mistakes men make in dealing with their bodies. Quite apart from the misery and havoc wrought by sheer misuse — by gluttony and drunkenness and lust — there are misunderstandings of the body's meaning, and one-sided ways of treating it, which, with little or no blame perhaps, still hinder grievously the worth and happiness that life might have, and that the love of God intended for it.
(a) The body is not to be neglected or despised. — In former times it was the belief of men that they honoured God by punishing the flesh. If one man were more saintly than another he would wear a hair shirt next his skin, or put round his body a belt 77ith spikes in it. Long and rigorous fasts, great and serious privations, were thought to be special marks of religious sanctity. Are we quite free from this error ? Have not we cared more for souls than bodies ? We have sometimes been so busy " saving souls " that we have cared next to nothing for bodies.
*[} It seems to me that the spurious and unspiritual feeling of the day is directed to spiritual even more frequently than to material objects ; and above all, that to divorce from each other a care for men's bodies and for their spirits, or under any pretence whatever to cast a slight upon the former, or even upon those who exclusively (at least as they fancy) devote themselves to the former, is to set at naught the first and last lessons of the Gospels. It would be utterly shocking to me to doubt that the plainest and most literal meaning of such passages as Matt. xv. 32, Mark viii. 2, 3 is also the most important, whatever other meanings may likewise be contained within them.1
II The great German tenor, Herr Heinrich Knote, once showed 1 Hort, Life and Letters, i. 405.
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 205
me his mirrors for examining the vocal chords. The first thing he does after waking is to see whether the vocal chords have the fine pink hue that indicates perfect health. And a red and inflamed vein means that something is wrong. His whole art is so to carry on the functions of digestion, exercise, sleep, work and play as to keep his body at the point of absolute perfection. The time was when men talked about despising the body. People wanted the moral teacher to have the student's pallor and to show those signs of exhaustion that betoken the midnight oil. We have finally discovered that sickliness is not saintliness. Holiness is wholeness, or healthiness — to use the Hebrew ex- pression. God made the body to be a fearful and wonderful instrument, and a man who injures his body and by carelessness and sin appears on the street with a bad cold or indigestion, or shows signs of gluttony, ought to be as humiliated as if he had been caught stealing chickens, forging a note, or telling lies. Sickness that comes from disobedience to the laws of God represents a form of personal degradation.1
TJ Behold : eating, drinking, clothing, and other necessaries pertaining to the support of the body are burdensome to a fervent spirit.
Grant me to use such comforts with moderation, and not to be entangled with an excessive longing for them. It is not allowed us to cast them all away, for nature must be supported ; but Thy holy law forbids to require superfluities and such things as are for mere delight; for otherwise the flesh would grow insolent against the spirit.
Between these, I beseech Thee, let Thy hand govern and direct me, that nothing be done in excess.2