vidual, but
merely his dwelling and instrument of expression, they came to feel
less regard for it, and lost their interest in its care and culture.
Even the early Christians, forgetting what Paul said about the body as
a temple, began to call it vile, and thought it an evidence of great
piety to treat it with contempt. I have read of one religious sect who
believed that the Creator of the body could not have been the Creator
of the soul, and held that the chief object of God's government was to
deliver the captive souls of men from their bodily prisons.

When men began to understand that the thinking principle was the real
self and the body merely a material encasement, it was no wonder that
they valued the body less and held mind as of great value. They failed
to see that mind without a material organ of expression is, in this
world, of no account. A great pianist with no piano could not make
music, and he would be considered a strange being if he did not care
for his instrument most scrupulously. Think of a Rubinstein
voluntarily breaking the piano strings or smashing the keys, while he
made discordant poundings, and excusing himself by saying that it was
"fussy" to take care of a piano until it was old. You cannot imagine
such a thing. We can all appreciate the value of a man-made instrument
or machine; but the God-created body, a combination of machines and
instruments of marvelous power and delicacy, we neglect or treat with
absolute, positive injury, and excuse ourselves on the ground that
when it is old we will treat it more kindly.

Melville says it is a sin to die, ignoring what is to be done with the
body. "That body," he says, "has been redeemed, that body has been
appointed to a glorious condition."

It seems to me we prize the body far more after its use for us is at
an end than while it is ours to use. We do not neglect the dead; we
dress them in beautiful garments, we adorn them with flowers, we
follow them to the grave with religious ceremonies, we build costly
monuments to place over their graves, and then we go to weep over
their last resting-place.

After all, is it not life that we should value? Life here and
hereafter, not death, is the real thing for which we should prepare,
and earthly life without a sound body is not life full and complete.
Life is joy, vigor, elasticity, freedom from pain or illness,
enjoyment of all innocent pleasures in maturity as well as in youth.
We have no right to l