| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 5 |
Page 2 |
A picture without any sky in it is defective. It has no uplift – it runs along on earthly levels, with nothing of heaven to brighten and glorify it. So the life with no sky in it, no vision of God and of heaven, is unworthy of an immortal being. The best is left out of it. It is only earthly, with no influence from above, drawing it upward, or within, inspiring good and beauty in it.
Men tell us that we have souls, but the form of the statement is incorrect. It indicates that the soul is something which we possess, as one might possess a piece of property or a fine picture, something outside of one’s self, not an essential part of one’s being. Really, however, our soul is our self. It is the central, vital, essential thing in us, that which makes us what we are. We are not bodies with souls; rather, we are spirits with bodies. The body is not the man or the woman that we are. It is but the house in which we live. It is not that in us which thinks and chooses and wills and loves. It is not that which is capable of growing into nobleness and beauty, and wearing at length the full image of Christ.
The body is a splendid creation. The lowest and smallest of God’s works are wonderful. There is a world of beauty in the tiniest flower, in the insect that creeps in the dust. The human body is the finest and most wonderful of all material creations. But there is something else in every human life that is finer, nobler, and more wonderful than the body. In the story of the creation we read that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It was this breath of God entering into the body, this living soul which God thus breathed into the creature formed of the dust, that made Adam a man. Our body is but our home. It is only a temporary home, too, for we shall leave it by and by, and we shall live then just as really without our body as we live now with it.
Page 2