... And then the Columbia young man—a big fellow and a soul. I had talked to him for many nights in an Upper Room class in the city. He took a cottage here through part of the first summer, before the Chapel began; then, through the months of Chapel and story work in the evening, I had good opportunity to become acquainted with the processes of his mind and heart. Of the last, I have nothing but admiration; invincible integrity, a natural kindness, a large equipment after the manner of the world's bestowal—but Inertia.
Now Inertia is the first enemy of the soul. It is caused by pounds. I do not mean that because a body is big, or even because a body is fat, that it is of necessity an impossible medium for the expression of the valuable inner life. There have been great fat men whose spiritual energy came forth to intensify the vibrations of the race, to say nothing of their own poundage. It is less a matter of weight after all than texture; still their fat was a handicap.
These facts are indubitable: Sensuousness makes weight in bulls and men; all the habits that tend to put on flesh tend to stifle the expression of the inner life. All the habits which tend to express the human spirit bring about a refinement of the body. More spiritual energy is required to express itself through one hundred and ninety pounds than through one hundred and forty pounds. Accordingly as we progress in the expression of the spiritual life, the refinement of our bodies takes place. As a whole, the great servers of men carry little excess tissue; as a whole in every fabrication of man and nature—the finer the work, the finer the instrument.
The body is continually levitated through spiritual expression and continually the more responsive to gravitation by sensuous expression.
The exquisite blending of maiden pink and sunlight gold that is brought forth in the Clovelly tea-rose could not be produced upon the petals of a dahlia or a morning-glory. That ineffable hue is not a matter of pigment alone; it can only be painted upon a surface fine enough. The texture of the tea-rose petals had to be evolved to receive it.... You must have gold or platinum points for the finest work; the brighter the light the finer the carbon demanded. It is so with our bodies. We live either for appetites or aspirations. The flood of outgoing human spirit, in its passionate gifts to men, incorporates its living light within the cells of our voice-cords and brain and hands. With every thought and emotion we give ourselves to the earth or give ourselves to the sky.
The soul is not inert; its instrument, the body, is so, by its very nature, formed of matter. The earth has required the quickening of countless ages to produce the form that we see—the gracious beauties of the older trees, the contour of cliffs. The very stem and leaf of a Clovelly rose is beautiful.
The finest rose of this season, when cut at the end of its budding mystery, left nothing but a little grey plant that you could cover in your hand. You would not think that such a plant could grow a bachelor's button; and yet it gave up an individual that long will be remembered in human minds. I saw that rose in the arch of a child's hand—and all about were hushed by the picture. For three days it continued to expand, and for three days more it held its own great beauty and then showered itself with a laugh upon a desk of blackened oak. We will not forget that inner ardency—the virgin unfolding to the sun—born of some great passion that seemed poised between earth and heaven—and expectant of its own great passion's maturity.
I went back to the little plant, called the children to it and all who would come. It was grey and neutral like the ground. I think a low song of content came from it. The Dakotan said so, and he hears these things. I thought of the ecstasy of the great givings—the ecstasy of the little old grey woman who had mothered a prophet and heard his voice afar in the world.
I showed them the lush and vulgar stems of the American beauties, whose marketable excellence is measured by size, as the cabbage is, and whose corresponding red is the red of an apoplectic throat. I showed them the shoulders and mane of a farm-horse and then the shoulders and mane of a thoroughbred. Upon the first the flies fed without touching a nerve; but the satin-skinned thoroughbred had to be kept in a darkened stall. The first had great foliages of coarse mane and tail; the other, a splendid beast that would kill himself for you, did not run to hair.