us:

"The body is the torment, hell, fate, load, tyrant,
Dreadful pest, and punishing trial, of the soul
Which, when it quits the body, flies, as from the bonds
Of death, to immortal God."

It was this idea that produced the wild asceticism prevalent in
the Christian Church during the Middle Age and previously, the
fearful macerations, scourgings, crucifixions of the flesh. It
should be understood that, though some of the phraseology of the
Scriptures is tinged by the influence of this doctrine, the
doctrine itself is foreign to Christianity. Christ came eating and
drinking, not abjuring nature, but adopting its teachings, viewing
it as a Divine work through which the providence of God is
displayed and his glory gleams. He was no more of a Pharisee than
nature is. As corn grows on the Sabbath, so it may be plucked and
eaten on the Sabbath. The apostles never recommend self inflicted
torments. The ascetic expressions found in their letters grew
directly out of the perils besetting them and their expectation of
the speedy end of the world. Christianity, rightly understood,
renders even the body of a good man sacred and precious, through
the indwelling of the Infinite. "We have this treasure in earthen
vessels," and the poor, dying tenement of flesh is hallowed as
"A vase of earth, a trembling clod, Constrain'd to hold the breath
of God."

The chief secret, however, of the origin of the peculiar phrases
under consideration consisted in their striking fitness to the
nature and facts of the case, their adaptedness to express these
facts in a bold and vivid manner. The revelation of the
transcendent claims of holiness, of the pardoning love of God, of
the splendid boon of immortality, made by Christ and enforced by
the miraculous sanctions and the kindling motives presented in his
example, thrilled the souls of the first converts, shamed them of
their degrading sins, opened before their imaginations a vision
that paled the glories of the world, and regenerated them,
stirring up the depths of their religious sensibilities, and
flooding their whole being with a warmth, an energy, a
spirituality, that made their previous experience seem a gross
carnal slumber, a virtual death. "And you hath he quickened, who
were dead in trespasses and sins." They were animated and raised
to a new, pure, glad life, through the feeling of the hopes and
the practice of the virtues of the gospel of Christ. Unto those
who "were formerly in th