lived the most obediently to the
simple, unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure
bodies,--simple, natural, childlike, healthy men,--and baptized their
souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never been sufficiently
understood. The basis of them lies in the solemn declaration, that our
bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them
is of the nature of sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the
outward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
its physical immortality, sets the last crown of honor upon it. That
bodily system which God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immortal companion,
must necessarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The
one passage in the New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly
is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to
come,--"He shall change our _vile_ bodies, that they may be fashioned
like his glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of
reviling of the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse
of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as
pollution, as corruption,--in short, one would think that the Creator
had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to
chain a festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of
these pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by
the persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the
bodily system; and the body, outraged and down-trodden, has turned
traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who
can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a
neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,--temptations to anger,
to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and
passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from
such a companion.

But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the
temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated
by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a
clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working
in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happ