I once shook hands with the great French organist, Guilmant. When I clasped his hand I forgot everything else; the hand was so soft, and yet so firm! All the inspiration and purpose of his soul had been registered in his body. And what a hand it was! I shall never forget that touch. It gave new meaning to Tennyson's beautiful line, "Oh for the touch of a vanished hand!" Our looks, smiles, accents, and very gait become the expression of the soul.
We once had a maid who came home in the dejected state following intoxication. When I appeared she said:
"I has me faults the same as others, but me heart is all right." Now, could her heart be right and her body wrong? Can we have a pure soul and an unclean body? Can we have an honest heart and a pilfering hand? Certainly not. For as the pure soul cleanses the body, so the degraded body pollutes the soul. Soul and body must grow together,—and alike. Sometimes we speak of a purely spiritual experience apart from all physical excitability; but such a thing is impossible, because every spiritual thought has its beautiful, physical accompaniment. The physical may run riot, as with some musicians who are principally noise and bluster; but the fact still remains that the most bilious and cold philosopher enjoys his gentle nervous thrill.
All worthy education means the spiritualizing of the body. Both before death, and after, the good man has a spiritual body. Not a spirit body, but a spiritual, a refined and sensitive instrument of the spirit. Throughout eternity man will be spiritualizing his body, or else degrading it.
We soon outgrow our immediate bodies, and find it necessary to augment them with all the forces of nature. These enlarged bodies must likewise be spiritualized or they will pervert the soul,—as is proved by every degraded form of institutional life.
The early man dimly realized that if he could get a larger hand, he would be a greater man. So, augmenting his hand with a club, he achieved a new growth in mind and character. Finding himself a greater man, he tried once more to increase his hand. Next, finding a sharp stone with which he could hack down small trees, he created a new mental and moral demand for a still finer instrument of his spirit. Then, in turn, he augmented his hand with bronze and iron until all great thundering mills and all cunning tools appeared as the mighty hand of the human will. This required an enormous soul growth in knowledge and character, and a corresponding growth in social consciousness and self-consciousness. To further our soul growth there is still a pressing demand for enlarged instruments. So it must ever be an even race between soul growth and hand growth.
In the same way, man developed soul and legs. It became necessary to make swifter legs or suffer a dwarfing of his soul. Consequently, he increased his speed with camels and horses; but even these became inadequate for his soul's growth. Then ensued a race of soul and legs, until to-day automobiles, steam cars, and every means of swift locomotion are but the augmented legs of man. The growing man soul is still in quest of swifter means of locomotion, and as these appear society is changed to its very foundations. New trades, new mental powers, new moral conditions confront him everywhere; and still he is speeding up.
When man made for himself far-seeing eyes in the telescope, the heavens opened; and what he saw in the heavens made for him a new earth. Then making for himself a short-seeing eye in the microscope, he discovered within and beneath things a new world, which in turn was a vast commentary on the heavens above. Likewise it may be truthfully said that soul and eyes have made an even race in their development. The same is true of soul and ears. Said a great building contractor of Chicago thirty-five years ago, "No man in the past ever dreamed of such a business as we are conducting, for it would have been impossible without the telephone." The telephone is but the enlargement of man's ears and mouth. This contractor moved men and materials, at will, over a radius of a hundred miles. Even the musical soul found a new incentive when the mouth was enlarged by piano, pipe organ, and orchestra. Every enlargement of the mouth calls for new musical skill in complex technique, and in finer inspiration and fuller elaboration. In short, every man soul is in quest of omnipresence. Living as he does in his Father's enfolding energies, he can know himself, and grow himself, only so far as he makes the instruments of his Father's will the instruments of his own will. The man soul is in the process of taking on the whole universe as his enlarged body. Two hundred pounds is quite large enough for the little body which he ever carries, and cares for, but to be a growing son of God he must progressively make the universe his augmented body. At night he may lay off his big body and rest; but in the morning he must put on his larger body, the universe, as he puts on his clothes and his boots, and go forth to live and work with God, his Father.
3. Would the absence of man cripple God?
Yes, the absence of man would thoroughly cripple God. Without the possibility of a family, God would just as well never have been. This is not an unbecoming or irreverent remark, but a statement that is very pleasing to God; it vindicates everything that is highest in His Holy Nature. His wisdom, character, and love are all involved in His purpose to have a family.