in the joy of the soul. Why have a contempt for
the body? I once did, and found that I was committing a great sin
against the Maker of it.

How dare we say "my body is vile," when He fashioned it! It is
blasphemous, when we consider that it is His Temple.

To my mind the body is a beautiful and wonderful thing, and is
greatly sinned against by our evil hearts and minds and tongues. The
body would do no harm if we, with our free-will, did not think out
the wickedness first in our own hearts. For first we commit theft and
adultery with the mind, and then we cause the body to carry out
these things. We know that the body is under the law, and its
appetites are under the law, but the heart and mind and tongue are
perpetual breakers of this law. It is lawful for the body to take its
meat and drink, but not to be surfeited and drunken. It is lawful for
the body to have its desires and its loves, but not to be promiscuous
and unfaithful.

But we know that a better way is to turn all appetites and greeds to
this, that we be greedy and ravenous for Christ. Only so shall we use
the appetites of mind and heart and body for their true end, and that
not by despising but by conversion.

With great insistence I have been taught not to despise anything
whatever in Creation of _things made_ in His most beautiful and
wonderful world, though often I may cry with tears, "Lord God!
raise me to a world holier and nearer to Thyself, for I am
heartbroken here."

Yet I am taught only to despise such things as lying, deceitfulness,
hypocrisy, and uncleanness--in fact, stenches of the heart and
mind,--and not to think too much about these, but, passing on, drop
out the recollection of them in thoughts of finer things.

His inward instruction has been this, quietly to lay upon one side all
that which is not pleasing to God; and one by one, and piece by
piece, to fold up and put away all that He does not love.

Above all, He has taught me to have no self-esteem and no prides;
and to such a degree do I have to learn this, that, without the
smallest exaggeration, I am hardly ever able to think myself the
equal of a dog. But the love of a dog for his master is a very fine
thing.

* * *

I think we mistake our own power and capacity in even seeking to
imitate the Christ; let us begin rather by taking into our heart and our
mind the Christ as the Man-Jesus. For His love and power only can
show us the way to imitate the Christ which is in Hi