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PHYSICAL RELIGION.

THERE is nothing from which mankind in the present day suffers more, than from the want of reverence for the human body. The mass of men, even the most cultivated, are content to pass their lives in the deepest ignorance of its structure, and of its most simple laws. All active sympathy with its fate, or interest in the infinitely varied details of its health and disease, is handed over to the medical profession, into whose modes of thought, aims, and principles of action, the public care not to enter. In the education of childhood and youth, no knowledge of the body is imparted, no instruction given for the conduct of the future physical life. No reverence is inculcated for physical laws, no aspirations cherished after physical excellence. Beauty of form, that imperishable source of joy and stamp of nobility, to be perpetuated through successive generations, so far from being held out as an object for our reverence and constant endeavour after, is rather regarded as a dangerous snare, and vanity, which may mislead men from the path of virtue. Physical strength is held in slight estimation by those who cultivate the intellect, and they who take delight in the sports and exercises which call it forth, are rather looked down upon as men of low tastes. Bodily health, the proof of a virtuous physical life, is not proposed as a chief end of our endeavours, nor regarded as an honour to its possessor. It is rather thought of as a blessing bestowed by providence, or inherited from our parents, with the attainment of which the individual's self has comparatively little to do. The laws of health are as little reverenced as understood. While the infringement of a moral law involves the deepest guilt, and is considered worthy of infinite punishment, to break a physical one, and thereby incur disease, is not deemed an offence at all, but only a misfortune. The animal or sensual passions as they are called, are viewed in a most degrading light, and the youth is warned to beware of indulgence in them, and rather to train himself in the vastly nobler enjoyments of the moral and reasoning faculties. These are thought

to be of a much higher and loftier nature than the others, which it is their duty to control and direct. Men set no high value in their theories on life itself, which some even view in the light of a penance, while they regard death as the greatest blessing. Length of life, and its proper and only beautiful termination in extreme age, after the gradual extinction of the vital powers, is by no means considered a noble goal for man's aim. The ill-regulated mind rather shrinks from the idea of natural decay, and admires much more the lamentable fate of martyrdom, or the premature death of interesting youth, just nature's punishment for broken laws. The whole material universe shares in this neglect with the body, its representative in man. The physical sciences with their infinite treasury of novelties and wonders are followed only by a few devoted adherents, while to society in general they are an unknown region. Besides this, all the so-called manual pursuits, are held as vastly inferior in dignity to the mental ones, which, under the name of the learned professions, claim for themselves the highest place in man's respect. The fine arts, sculpture and painting, and the mechanical arts, all of which are concerned with material objects, although their dignity and powerful influence are daily more and more felt, are yet very far from occupying their due position.

In short, in whatever direction we look, we find that the body and matter in general, hold a very secondary place in man's reverence. We see that almost the whole of mankind, with the exception of the few who expressly follow material pursuits-grow, live, and die, with their thoughts and interests turned in quite a different direction. It is mind, and not body, moral and intellectual, not physical themes, which possess their heart.

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Spirit," they say, “is infinitely higher and nobler than matter: the soul is the truly glorious part of our humanity. Does it not constitute the attribute of man, by which he is raised above the rest of nature to the likeness and comprehension of the Deity himself? How poor in comparison is the body, its humble companion, whose tardy movements and coarse sensibilities but clog its etherial essence! The latter shall soon perish, and with it all its excellences; but the other, glad to be released from its prison-house, shall soar away into everlasting bliss. Why then waste our time in laying up treasures that corrupt? Let us, first of all things, attend to our spiritual part; and then, even though our body perish, we have still saved that which is alone all-sufficient." Thus do men reason, and thus are all their sympathies and aspirations bound up in their spiritual welfare. As they judge of themselves, so do they of others. A well-spent moral life, and endeavours to elevate the spiritual condition of others, command their warmest admiration; but of a virtuous physical life they have no conception; and for the struggles and aspirations of those, who have sought to ennoble men physically, little sympathy. While the names of poets, moralists, and mental philosophers, are in every mouth, and their lines and precepts in every heart; few are acquainted even with the names, far less with the deeds of those who have striven in the cause of the human body. It is well for them, physicians and physiologists, if they escape the charge of materialism, or the

disgust attaching to the charnel-house or vivisections. Sad is it indeed to look back on the fate of the apostles of the body! For if any ideal or object of pursuit be looked down upon, or not sufficiently reverenced, those who follow it will necessarily share in that irreverence. Therefore, has the clergyman, who has the cure of souls, been for ages held in much higher esteem and love than the physician, who has the cure of bodies.

And not only have these professions been ranked on such principles, but every other profession and calling has had its place assigned by the same standard. The spiritualist has ever been esteemed above the materialist; the thinker above the doer; the musical composer above the finished musician; the dramatic writer above the actor; the mental above the manual pursuits. A few mental directions of man's energy are elevated above the others, and chiefly honoured, so that the young man of liberal education, is impelled by all his accustomed sympathies and feelings to adopt one of them, whether or not it be fitted for his nature. According to this gauge, the nearer a man's pursuit approaches to pure spirit, the more is he esteemed--the nearer to matter, the less.

Whence, then, has arisen this extraordinary and arbitrary mode of judging of the elements of nature? Who has presumed to settle the claims of precedence between the twin elemental principles of the universe; and thereby cause so powerful an influence on man's existence? If we look for the main source of this universal preference for spirit, and things connected with it, we shall find it in the Christian religion. This religion, springing as it did out of the ancient Hebrew worship, which delighted in representing the infinite material universe, as dependent on the nod of a supreme spiritual Self-existent being, is essentially a spiritual faith. According to its doctrines, the Deity himself, from whom all things originated, and to whom all are subject, is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. He first called matter into existence, and imposed on it laws after his own will, reserving to himself the power of changing or annihilating them, whenever he thought it necessary. Man, the wondrous compound of mind and body, also owed his origin to this spirit; who gave him life by a pure act of his will. Believing then in the infinite supremacy of the spiritual element, and worshipping it exclusively, he naturally bestowed his chief reverence on the representative of the Deity in himself. Hence his soul was the grand object of all his thoughts, while the body was little regarded, or at most borrowed a reflected light from its more favoured companion. The soul, it was believed, was joined in some mysterious way to the body at birth, and condemned for a brief period to travel through this life in its company, clogged and confined by its ignoble associate. At death, however, it resumed its own privileges as spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and soared away into an immortality of weal or woe, while its despised companion was consigned to the darkness of a grave, and to disgusting decay, from which the ignorant mind shrank with abhorrence.

Who could entertain such views of the nature and ultimate destinies of the twin parts of man, without becoming almost entirely absorbed in the fate of the one, and as wholly neglecting that of the other? Such is the Christian doctrine of life, and such the effect it has had on man.

Wherever it has made its way, supported by the beautiful character of its originator, it has given an intensely spiritual direction to men's minds; and their tastes, judgments, social scale, and various pursuits, have been modified by it in the way mentioned above.

But physical religion is diametrically opposed to the Christian and spiritual beliefs. It can allow none of them, seeing that they give to mind a superiority over matter, and so deprive the latter of its rightful place in the affection and reverence of man. Its fundamental propositions are matter is as noble as spirit, the body as the soul. To separate the one from the other is to destroy the truth of nature; to place the one above the other is a monstrous presumption, destroying the harmony of the universe, where all things are equally important, and where the laws of one substance never yield to those of another.

The belief that the Deity is a spirit is completely untenable. The natural theologians, who have attempted to prove it, and who, doubtless, have followed the same line of reason as the ancients, who proposed the doctrine, argue thus:-"In the universe around us, we everywhere see marks of design; from this we must infer a designing mind, reasoning by analogy from what we find in ourselves."

But they forget, that the mind which designs in man, is inseparably connected with a vitally organized brain; therefore, to conclude that the designer of the universe is pure spirit, is to reason against all analogy. According to our experience, mind is invariably found in connection with a brain, and never creates matter.

Not only does physical religion deny the possibility of spirit having originated matter, or of the laws of matter being ever in one iota subject to those of spirit, it cannot allow a prerogative to the one, in any particular, over the other. Thus it entirely denies the possibility of the immortality of the one without the other. Such a belief tends inevitably to destroy the equal place both should hold in our reverence, thus entailing the most ruinous consequences. The narrow conception of salvation for the one, without, or even at the expense of the other, is utterly condemned by physical religion, according to whose views no scheme of salvation can be received, which omits any part of humanity. Our bodily and mental interests are inseparably bound together, and no part of us can rise or fall, without the rest taking a share. Thus physical evil always infers moral evil, and the reverse. Our body cannot be diseased without our

mind becoming so likewise.

It is the duty of all men to study the laws of their body, no less than those of their mind. If they do not, if they have not sufficient reverence for the body to take due care for its healthy development either in themselves or in others, when they break any of its laws, which they are certain to do, it will be little excuse to plead ignorance. All moral sin may exactly in the same way be resolved into ignorance, but naturc accepts no such excuse. The conduct of our physical life is just as difficult as that of our moral one. To live a virtuous physical life deserves, therefore, as great admiration and praise as the other. The ennoblement of the body in ourselves and in others is just as high an aim for man as that of the spirit. Can you have a healthy mind without a healthy

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