Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/66

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with the beasts that perish, has lost it, and the grosser senses drag the creature down to the earth. But the fashioning thy limbs to an erect posture, has given thy head its beautiful outline and proportion; whence the brain, that delicate ethereal germ, has full room to extend itself, and send out its branches. The forehead swells rich in thought; the animal organs recede; it is the form of a man.


September Nineteenth.

THE BODILY ORGANS THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE SOUL.

"I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."Psalm cxxxix. 14.

THE members and organs of the human body are but the outward forms and material instruments of mental organs, and of spiritual functions. And if the organs of the body correspond to certain organs of the spirit, then the operation of those bodily organs, and their effects, must correspond to the operations of the spiritual organs, and their effects. If the hand of the body corresponds to the hand of the spirit—if the bodily eye is but an outward form of the mental organ—then the actions and effects of the hand and the eye must correspond to that spiritual force and feeling, and to that spiritual sight, which are effects of the mind. Let us reflect for a moment upon a lifeless corpse, and then ask in what it differs from the living and sentient man? Beautiful, even in ruins, is that out-