The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1867-03-27
HenIth md HoIine.u.


This is the caption of a sermon
preached in Cincinnati, last Sunday
night, and reported in the Commercial
of Monday. The preacher took the po-
sition that religion had become tradi-
| tionally contaminated with a sort OF
| dyspepsia, and that in times past it was
common to regard robust health as al
most Incompatible with the proper
amount of spiritual delicacy. Paleness
was sort of understood and expected
concomitant of godliness. 1t would be
found, the preacher said, that many a
doctrine that now affronts the common
sense of Christendom, and many an
ecclesiastical practice against which the
most sacred feelings of the best Chris
tian revolts, is not the offspring of the
sanctity but the sickness of some feeble
and fussy old father of the church. He
instanced the "abominable physical
abuses of the Hermits, Anchorites, and
various mendisant orders, male and fe-
male, during many centuries OF Eu.
ropean superstition, which ;have i'm
parted TO tue whole Christian church a
taint of disease and death next to Jim
possible to eradicate"
The reverend gentleman said that in
this country Christianity has assumed,
or rather recovered, more normal
tone, for the reason that ours was a
land OF plenty, of great enterprise, of
great physical development, and there
fore of a more healthfuI, moral and re-
ligious development. Starving and
enfeebling the body was going out of
vogue, even in Lent. Our American
colleges and schools, even the Theolog-
ica1 Seminaries, have discovered that
the health of the body is the health of
the soul. You cannot injure the one
without detriment to the other. It be-
came us, he said, to cultivate the body
as part and parcel of our Immortality,
for he believed in the resurrection of
the body and the spirit; or, in other
words, that the two were conjoined for
time and eternity. We quote from this
portion of the sermon, as follows:
"In fact, the more we know of our bo-
dies, the more evident it becomes that
they are not merely the temporary
clothing of the spirit, but in some di-
vine and mysterious way are bound up
with the inn ermost life OF our immor-
tai souls. Year by year their flying
perpetually renewed from the great
fountain of life within. And now and
then we are permitted to look upon
some favored mortal whose physical
being is the most complete and beauti-
full translation of that which is immor-
tai. When we thrill before the match
less face and form of Ristori as it moves
before us in wonderous personation of
the past: when we behold the most IA
miliar youthful presence transformed
on the magic platform of the tableaux
into hero, oriental queen, ideal maid OF
poetic romance, cherub, sybil, angel or
saint; when in some mood of divine
tenderness or crisis of duty, the COM
monest humanity suddenly shines be-
fore us in a marvellous dignity and love-
liness; when in our own highest mo-
ments we feel ourselves ''al compact, ("
form and spirit blended in one; in such
moments we realize that our bodies are
indeed the temple of the spirit of God
have no undue longing to peer through
the veil that hangs before our coming
\ life; but have deep and living con-
| v1ctlon that God viii never destroy his
own consummate work. This fieshy
/ body in which we now abide, i. to the
spiritual body in which we shall ap-
! pear, as the rough cast in plaster is to
| the marble statue, hereafter to be
Y
that is grandest, most radiant, most
! pathetic, in our human nature; the
loftisst piety and the broadest bsnevo-
| lence, have come to me through revela-
tions of our earthly form. Sure am
that the highest heaven will be no
heaven to me could I not look once
more upon faces whose lovelineSS is
/ now my best vision of divinity, could 1
| not once more gaze down into the se-
rene depths or eyes through which I
have already looked into the better
I land; could 1 not again clasp hands
whose touch has lifted me as by the
strength of Him who said to suffering
humanity, arise and l1nLk." In some
ways befitting its own supreme beauty
and vindicating its essential spiritual
Eity, our body will cling to our soul; as
] the ages of eternity roll away, hover
ing around 1t with a more ETHEREAL
\ grace, till it becomes the celestial Ian
i guage whereby man talks with man,
and humanity holds communion with
the Infinite Spirit of Love"