ut the rest of faith in God. An unsubmissive, unconfiding,
unresigned soul will make vain the best hygienic treatment; and, on
the contrary, the most saintly religious resolution and purpose may be
defeated and vitiated by an habitual ignorance and disregard of the
laws of the physical system.

Perfect spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect physical
religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much
taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify
God, not simply in our spirits, but in our bodies and spirits. The
only example of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us
more than anything else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness.
There is a calmness, a steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a
naturalness in his evolution of the sublimest truths under the strain
of the most absorbing and intense excitement, that could come only
from the one perfectly trained and developed body, bearing as a
pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth,
journeying on foot from city to city, always calm yet always
fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred
enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to
continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately
patient, serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the
earth, the only man that perfectly glorified God in His body no less
than in His spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing His
disciples He chose plain men from the laboring classes, who had
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 pass