Spirit, soul and body ...

Preface

This book had its rise in two sermons delivered t by the author before his deeply loved congregation in Gospel Tabernacle Church, Los Angeles, California. The sympathy there manifested in the spiritual relations of The Body and The Mind and the encouragement then given by these dear people led to a further study and extended presentation elsewhere of various divisions of this large subject. These are now gathered into somewhat of a whole, and with one or two added subjects are reluctantly laid before the thoughtful readers of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The incompleteness and imperfection of the entire series of studies are too obvious to demand more than a mere acknowledgment on the part of the author of enforced responsibility therefor.

Throughout this series an effort has been made to hold the discussion true to three standards. First of all it has been endeavored to stay very close to the Word of God. Again the practical value of actual Christian experience has ever been kept in mind. In the third place scientific and technical errors vi Preface

have been carefully guarded against. The book is not dogmatic, nor does it profess to be final. It is aimed to be suggestive and inspiring toward further study.

May the Lord be pleased to make this message a source of strength and purity among His people, by the power of the Holy Spirit, rather than a cause of confusion and uncertainty. If He shall condescend to do so all the Glory shall be His.

NYACK-ON-THE-HUDSON

MAY, 19 IO.

Chapter I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY

IN order to appreciate the spiritual value of the body, and to give good heed to the Scriptural admonitions concerning the body, we must first come to realize its great importance in our Christian life. To some people it may appear strange that a book which aims to lead on to the deeper life in Christ should devote a large portion of its contents to the subject of the body. The body is generally considered by spiritual people to be crude and carnal, and not to be brought into the inner circle of spiritual consideration. But we need to have our attention called to the fact that the interests of the body make up almost our entire earthly life. Inasmuch as Christian experience does not consist in elusive dreams or in pictures of what we shall enjoy in heaven, but is made up of our actual daily life, it becomes apparent immediately that any element which influences a large portion of our daily life becomes a factor in our spiritual experience. This is true of the body. Careful consideration of the subio Spirit, Soul and Body

jects suggested in this chapter will impress the candid reader that the body occupies a place of supreme interest in the activities of our daily life, and for this reason it should be very carefully taken into account in our efforts to achieve complete spiritual victory while on earth. The statement that the body is exceedingly important is supported by the following considerations.

I. The body is important because of the Time it takes.

Under this heading mention may be made first of all of the time the body requires for sleep. Children sleep from 12 to 15 hours, aged persons from 5 to 8. The average time spent in sleep by an adult is just about eight hours per day, which is one-third of his entire earthly existence. This is a serious proportion of our earthly life to be appropriated entirely by the body. For it must be borne in mind that sleep is required by the body rather than by the mind. The mind does not grow weary, the will does not lose its force, the emotions do not become exhausted, but it is the body, the brain, the nerve system which wears out and must be refreshed by sleep. If we should go no further than this one point, the body would be worthy of no small degree of consideration, inasmuch as its demand for sleep robs us of the voluntary use of one-third of our earthly life.

2. It takes a good amount of time to cleanse the body. It takes some people less time than it ought to take, but with those who attend to the proper care of the body as they should, considerable time is expended in this way. It costs more or less moreover to provide apparatus and material to cleanse the body. Even the soap that an adult person has used throughout his life, if converted into money, would amount to a surprisingly large missionary offering. All this time and the accompanying work and worry is to be charged up to the account of the body.

3. It takes a large amount of time to clothe the body. Some people dress for every meal and eat four times a day; and when it takes them an hour or two to dress, we have here an unusual portion of the day given up simply to clothing the body. If on that Great Day all the mirrors are permitted to tell their story, what revelations will be made. The average Christian spends more time in dressing and adorning his body, or hers, than in clothing the soul with humility, or putting on the garments of praise. All the time spent in clothing our mortal frame goes to the account of the body.

4. It takes much time to house the body. It also calls for a great deal of effort and expense. We settle back comfortably in the cushioned pews at church and sing, "A tent or a cottage, what do I care," but we seem to care just the same; and all this care to comfortably, beautifully and healthfully house ourselves is for the body. The spirit is already housed within our mortal flesh so our time must be given to providing for the housing of the body itself. If all the time consumed in house hunting were considered alone, it would, for most people, amount to a greater period than the total time spent in searching for the riches of heaven. And this is all for the body.

5. The time required to feed the body is a large factor in this list. Three times a day, unless we are anti-breakfast cranks, must the body be fed; if we are English it may be four times or five. It may be we have read our Bibles or it may be we have not, but we must surely have our meaL anyhow.

No matter how our spiritual interests suffer the need of the body for food is promptly and regularly attended to. We may not have time to pray, but we always have time to eat, — and this time at the end of a year amounts to hundreds of hours.

We have glanced at the time it takes to apply to the body a number of necessary things. Let us continue this inquiry by calling attention to the fact that it takes even more time to prepare these things for being applied to the body.

1. For instance, it takes a large amount of time to get the clothes ready to wear.

There must be trips to the stores, with their accompanying amount of talking, fretting and weariness ; there must be great attention given to matching colors and to harmonizing shades of cloth with the complexion of the skin, etc. ; and then there must be the long and trying experience with the dressmaker or the tailor, and with all the fitting and trying on and altering this takes time indeed. And when we consider the amount of time someone has had to spend in hard labor in order to earn money enough to pay for all this, the time-total for the clothing of the body is decidedly increased. We use up more brain matter over obtaining a new garment, as a rule, than we do in many times that number of hours spent in praying for the salvation of the lost. But how about the cloth: where did it come from? The man who sells it to us says it is all wool. It has taken a good while to make that cloth. A great many people have spent hours and hours working on it in the mills. And back of the mills is the amount of time to be added during which the farmer was raising the sheep which grew the wool, time extending from the perplexing experiences with the stubborn lamb through all the hours of watchful care over the growing animals until the wool was finally sent to market and sold. Other items of time might be included, but this is enough to remind us that in order simply to clothe the body dozens of people spend hundreds of hours preparing the clothes to be worn.

2. It takes a longer time to prepare a house for the body. Before the boards are put into the building they have to be worked on in the planing mill, and before they reach the planing mill they have to be cut in the forest and transported to the saw mill, — all of which takes a great deal of time. If we were to count in this list the time during which the tree was growing — the tree that furnished the boards that went into a house for the body — the result would be greater. After the lumber and hardware is all prepared through these long-drawn-out processes of many years and is finally ready to be put into a house, the time consumed in actually constructing the building is considerable, especially if we count in the total time of all the men who work on the house. It takes the masons, the carpenters, the bricklayers, the painters, and above all the plumbers, a great many hours to get one "tent or a cottage" in condition to house three or four bodies. But to this list is to be added still the time which the owner has had to work in order to obtain money to pay for this house and the building of it. Often the savings of almost an entire life time are put into a house, which thus represents hours upon hours, years upon years, of hard work. All this time goes just for housing the body.

3. The time required to prepare food for use by the body is very great, and is seldom realized. The work of the woman who cooks demands her attention a good while before the rest are called to the table; and after one meal, she must clean the dishes, put the room in order, and then start in peeling potatoes for the next meal, etc. This is repeated several times a day, week in and week out. All this is not for the soul, but for the body. An immense amount of expense, which represents time spent in earning money, would be spared if we did not need to eat. We would not need to build a kitchen to our house, nor a pantry, nor a dining room; we would not need to spend money for stoves and kitchen utensils, for a refrigerator, for table linen, silver, china or glass-ware. It would make a great difference indeed in our earthly life if we did not have to take so much time for things connected with the feeding of the body. But before the food comes to the house it already has a long history back of it. We must count in the hours when the poor farmer had to get out early mornings to sprinkle Paris green on his potato vines, it may be, in order to furnish potatoes for someone's body, and we must add the hours spent in sowing, cultivating, hoeing, weeding, digging and marketing the supplies demanded by human bodies. To this moreover must be added the time given to raising cattle, to slaughtering them, to distributing them from the Meat Trust abattoir to the wholesalers and from the wholesalers to the retailers and from the retailers to the kitchens of those who are going to take this meat into their bodies. Just one ordinary dinner of beefsteak and potatoes, with one vegetable, one salad and a dessert, represents the consumption of an almost incredible amount of time and energy. Let us never forget that this entire list of hours and weeks and years goes down to the account of the body.

No one should say that these things are wrong, just because they take so much time. It is a part of God's plan for man to work, even if it does turn out to be a fact that practically all his work has to do with his body. This fact, indeed, only serves to emphasize the importance of the body in actual life, which, we must always remember, furnishes the occasion for spiritual life. If one were to say that nine-tenths of man's earthly existence is directly associated with the interests of the body, would he not be speaking too conservatively? The longer this subject is considered the more probable it seems that it is more likely to be ninetynine one-hundredths of our earthly life from first to last which we find given up to activities which center on our bodies. This is why a woman works all day, this is why a man goes early to his labor and returns wearied at night, — for the sake of the body. But someone objects, — You have forgotten the years which the young spend in school, from 10 to 20 years, and this is all for the mind, and not for the body. A little further consideration of this objection proves it to be untrue. Why, we may ask, do the children go to school; is it because they are enamoured of learning, or because their parents are so devoted to culture? Hardly this. What is the real thing which drives them to school? Someone answers, It is that they may receive an education. And why do they need an education? They must have an education in order to make a good living. And for what do they need to make a good living? For the body, — that is all. The final demands of the body for housing, clothing, feeding, etc., are the things which drive the children to school. Money is needed to purchase these things ; and money cannot be obtained very easily without an education. If it were not for this, neither parents nor the State would make education compulsory. We send our boys to learn arithmetic in order that they may some day be able to buy clothes for themselves ; we send our girls to learn grammar in order that they may some day be worthy of a husband who will provide a house for them ; and we ourselves sometimes take advanced studies, and read up at home, in order that we may obtain a better position in the business world and perchance be surer of our ability to supply food for our own bodies. To be sure there is a very small amount of time given to literature and art for the simple enjoyment of these things in themselves, but with the average person this is almost too small to compute. Art for art's sake is extremely rare. This objection concerning school days being disposed of, it seems to remain an unchallenged statement that the demands of the body are connected with almost the entire sum of the earthly hours allotted to us by our Creator. If the body is so important as all this simply because of the time it takes, surely it ought not to be neglected in studying the fundamental problems of a balanced and complete Christian life.

Chapter II. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY

THERE are many more reasons in addition to those brought forth in the preceding chapter why the body occupies a position of very great importance in our earthly life. We shall proceed to mention some of these, although they need not be given as extended a treatment as the first. It is to be borne in mind throughout the reading of these pages that the body is thus emphasized because through its evident domination of our earthly life, it is continually influencing our spiritual life. For this reason we must consider it carefully. Let us continue to note its importance.

II. The body is important because of its Burdens.

i. One of the burdens of the body is weariness. This is a very simple word, but there are thousands who experience such intense weariness as cannot be described in words. When one is thoroughly tired out life seems to lose many of its reasons, and things look entirely different. An experience of complete and prolonged exhaustion is an awful thing to pass through. Now it is the body which grows weary. The mind and soul do not tire, but the body, the mechanism, becomes worn out and needs to be rested and restored. It is because deep weariness effects the actual experience of all who come under its power that we name it as one of the reasons why the body is important in spiritual life.

2. Another burden of the body is pain. It is not according to the theology of some of us to have much pain, but pain seems to be very inconsiderate of our theology and often comes in spite of our protesting. The world is full of pain, — Mrs. Eddy to the contrary notwithstanding. When acute pain reigns within us, it is for the time being the most real thing in the world to us. Pain is of the body, To be sure, there would be no pain if there were no mind to register the pain: but pain does not arise in the mind; it has its cause in some disturbance of the organs or tissues of the body. We can say therefore that pain is a bodily thing. Moreover, pain is very important because it interferes with all our mental and spiritual activities. We cannot read the Bible or pray when we are in great pain, we scarcely can keep our thoughts in any orderly fashion at all.

3. Disease is another of the burdens of the body. We are constantly surrounded by disease-bearing bacteria, which slip into our organisms so easily to cause distress and death. Argue as we may and think as we please, it remains a fact nevertheless that the inhabitants of the world are practically all afflicted with disease of some form or degree. It is asserted by medical authorities that very few men and women are truly whole and healthy; either organic or functional disturbance interferes with the perfect life of almost every member of our human race. Practically no bodies are normal and true to the physical ideal. Now, disease weakens our power to think and meditate, bears down on our spirit, reduces our liberty for service, affects our attitude toward the world and in many other ways seriously interferes with our actual life, — even if it does not bring that life to an undesired end. We are are well justified in saying that disease, with its awful ravages on the one hand, and its subtle inner influences on the other, is one of the burdens which makes the body an important factor in real life.

4. Among some of the other burdens of the body may be mentioned the loss of any of the senses. These five chief senses which we use so constantly are not appreciated until one of them is taken away. What a difference it makes in our actual life when the sense of hearing is removed or when we are bereft of the power to see ! And all this, it must be remembered, is of the body, for the mind could still hear and the mind could still see if the bodily mechanism were unimpaired. There are thousands of people whose pleasure and manner of living is greatly interfered with and whose usefulness is seriously restricted and whose view of this world and grasp of its meaning is deeply affected, because just one of the five senses is destroyed. What a great amount of damage to our inner life can be wrought by some irregularity in this division of this body of ours !

5. Sometimes the body is wounded or crippled, or abnormally formed; and how great is this burden to those who have to bear it. What a difference it makes in their lives, how it often turns years of expected sunshine into long drawn out days of darkness and sorrow. No one can appreciate the importance the body plays in daily life, until he has been visited with some affliction which deprives him of the full use of it, even for a brief season.

6. The question of temperature furnishes more burdens for the body. In the summer time it seems as if men and women devote their chiefest energies to keeping cool. They take expensive trips to the mountains and the seashore, and drink harmful cold drinks, and indulge in a great deal of fretting and worrying in an effort to keep from melting. They sit and fan themselves so vigorously that the body generates more heat through the exercise than the fan can remove. It is too hot to go to church, too hot to read the Bible, too hot to think. Bow strange that a few degrees change in temperature can so upset our life. In the winter all this is reversed. Every effort is made to keep warm. Far more money is spent in purchasing coal than was spent in the summer for buying refrigerator ice and cold drinks. We put on heavy clothing, invest in expensive furs, eat a great deal of meat, close up all the windows, and are soon taken sick, which means more trouble of another kind, — all in an effort to keep the body warm. For we must ever remember that it is the body which grows hot in summer and cold in winter. The spirit is not affected directly by the temperature of the air, but the body is very sensitive to it. If the room is too warm, we cannot enjoy our Bibles; if the church is a little too cool, we cannot pay attention to the sermon, we are thinking of our bodies all the time. It seems as if throughout the entire year we are struggling with the temperature, trying to make it fit our body. What an immense amount of time and effort goes in this direction, and how constantly influential is the body, the cause of it all !

7. Among the burdens of the body is one which is seldom noticed but frequently effective, — bad air. Impure air has been responsible for many naps in prayer meeting, it has induced many cases of sickness and has rendered powerless many earnest sermons full of truth. The question of ventilation may seem a very worldly subject, but it has a remarkably close bearing on religious life. It takes more religious zeal than most Christians possess to receive profit from a church service of any kind when the body is oppressed and the mind intoxicated by vitiated air. This, we must remember, is also one of the burdens of the body, and directly affects our spiritual life. All Satan has to do is to see that the air is tainted, and the preacher labors in vain, the Word of God comes without response. And yet there are some people who fail to see how the body has any direct bearing on religious experience.

In considering the preceding burdens of the body, and the many others which might be added, the value of the list is that they, through their presence in the body, produce a great effect in the mental life, which in turn closely conditions the spiritual life. Many spiritual irregularities which have been attributed to deliberate attacks of the arch-fiend, have much more to do with the pressure of some of the burdens of the body than with Satan. Of course it was he who caused man to sin and bring upon himself all these bodily afflictions. But that having been accomplished, Satan could have safely left the field, for he had loaded upon man a list of physical irregularities which would follow him throughout his generations, and, whenever they appeared, affect seriously in one way or another his inner life, and thus directly interfere with the activities of his soul. For all of these reasons, surely the body should be considered a very important factor in religious life.

III. In the third place, the body is important because it is our only means of knowing the outside world.

i. All that we know of the world around us we have received through the body. The mind of course learned it and it retains the knowledge, but the mind learned it only as the body was willing to communicate the information to the mind. What do we know of an orange but those things we have learned of it through handling it, which means bodily touch, or through seeing it, which means bodily vision, or through eating it, which means bodily taste? The mind never came in contact with the orange, but the body did, and through the body, the mind was informed of the orange. All that we know of the fragrance of a flower, or the glory of a sunset, or the majesty of a range of mountains, we have learned through some of the senses of the body. All that we know of the voice of our friends and the faces of our loved ones, we have learned through the body: our ears have heard, our hands have handled, or our eyes have seen, — and all these are bodily activities.

2. Moreover, all we know of the Word of God we know through the body. No reader of these lines has any knowledge of God's Word which he has not received through his bodily eyes as he has read it to himself, or his bodily ears as someone has read to him, or his bodily sense of touch, if he be blind and deaf. The Spirit of God, to be sure, interprets and illuminates the Word, but He never enlarges its meaning to our mind until our mind has first been informed of its presence and been given its statements. It lends added importance to the body to know that we are dependent entirely on it for our first knowledge of God's Word.

3. But we go farther still and see that we are entirely dependent upon the body for all the messages of truth and experiences of life which the Word of God brings. This follows from the fact that we owe to our body and its communicating senses, the first knowledge of the Bible. There is seemingly in every human soul, independent of the body, a dim notion of a great supreme Being, but this, at its best, is very vague and practically meaningless for actual life. It is only through the works of God and more particularly the Word of God that we learn of the nature of God, and we have become acquainted with His works and His Word only by means of the body. The wonderful revelation of the character of God, the awful consequences of sin, the glorious hope of eternal life, and the sweet story of the Saviour — all of which means so much to the Christian — we owe to the willingness of the body to communicate to the mind. Our very salvation itself we may trace through the body as an absolutely essential link. We never would have known of the way of escape from sin and of the possibility of eternal life through grace if someone had not spoken it to our bodily ears, or placed it before our bodily eyes, by them to be communicated to the mind.

Such statements as these may seem extreme, but they are scientifically correct. Such examples as Miss Laura Bridgeman and M'iss Hielen Keller prove these things to us. Recent years have demonstrated that Miss Keller has a superior mind, which of course she had potentially all her life. But with all her quick and strong mental ability what did she know of her mother, or of the relationship of a mother and daughter, until someone contrived a way of communicating these facts to her mind through her body? She was deprived of the use of only part of her bodily senses. She was not diseased or demented, but with all this, her inability to see and hear kept her shut up in a prisoncell of absolute darkness and gross ignorance, from which there was no escape until the body became the willing channel of communication to the mind. What did Miss Kellar know of the Bible, what did she know of God, what did she know of free Salvation until her body told it to her mind? If we have not thought about these things in this way before they may appear startling, but they are most certainly true. Hiow important then is this body, which is the prison house of the mind, and which has the power to tell us wonders of the outside world, of people and things of God and heaven ; which also early in life has the power to close up every avenue to the mind and plunge us into unbroken darkness and loneliness ! The longer we consider the body and the part it plays in actual life, the more we must be impressed with its great importance.

IV. The body is important, furthermore, because through it alone can the spirit express itself.