Diogenes of London (collection)/This Body Of Death
THIS BODY OF DEATH
GROTESQUE, precarious, defiant, here stands this temple of the human soul, the house of infinite pains, the plaything of organic change, the masterpiece of God. Erect from a trivial foundation, framed of a mysterious stuff unknown, insecure, desperately resolute, fulfilled of gay bravery, obnoxious to all general vicissitudes, it fronts the baser principalities of earth, unbending, unafraid. In its passage out of the void its home into the void its bourne, it holds a brief tenure of the world, the mark of multiform and multitudinous antagonists. It is transfigured from the worthless dust; and 'twixt that state of precedent nothingness and this stage of delicate life lies a divine handicraft, the ever-recurrent miracle, which should you fathom you were come to the skill of God. Pallid and frail, composite of vain and sluggish elements that blow about a windy world, it has uprisen to such a glory, has touched such an eminence, has assumed so fine a property, that now it moves the noblest visibility on earth. From the hour of its conception to its moment of eternal rest it swaggers stoutly against brave old Time, eager to wrest some short and meagre privilege. All the coarse and stridulous creatures of inferior creation come out against it, arrayed as one to lay it in its kindred ashes. All evils have their way with it; day by day and year by year a myriad demons claw and fret it. Earth unchains her monstrous horrors against it: the vile universe joins in a sordid bond to thrust it back upon its Maker. Out of the deeps, from the shallows, upon the flat, in cloister, upon open, out of space and all eternity issues the hot breath of their wrath upon it, this poor, slim, tremulous continent of life, the latest-born of God, the final achievement of the æons. Earth has no trial, hell has no torture, ruthless enough to inflict upon this fabric. Fragile, weak, perishable, sensitive of all, it stands subjective to the wild hand of Nature, piteous, unpitied, terrible, undeterred, supreme still over its vehement adversaries, indefatigable, steadfast, tolerant, and debonair, prolific and populous, the most eminent and sanest apparition upon the whole globe.
Thus tenaciously existent it endures, the keeper of that superior soul that is ourself. And, derivative of earth, while still our guardian, it smacks yet of its own lowly constituents. By it we have our being—this is its finest service—and with it we are ever in tumultuous war. From end to end of its swift course it is ever in our bonds and we in its; now the one in servitude, anon the other. Twin with the spirit in being, it battles ceaselessly for the lordship: now the slave and abject, now the imperial taskmaster. Dumb, blind, insensate, it yet lends eyes, ears, and intellectual vision to the soul. It is a clog, a heavy burden to trail us in the mire, turning to clay its own inhabitant; yet by its means we move, aspire, and pray. Anon is it servile to the spirits uses, anon it slips the yoke and bolts for ruin. It descends upon abasement; its haunts are animal and low; it is fain to grovel; it is dull and somnolent; it would keep us perforce in company with our lowermost agnates, after the likeness of which it is fashioned. Yet in itself it is the material conduit of a thousand lofty feelings; not one fine thought or noble fancy but has run through its vile and wonderful channels. We are its subject and its debtor; we are its contemptuous over-lord. Here have we our home appointed us: herein we watch its growth, its lapses, its wayward courses, its eccentric, unlovely, and most horrid humours; and when it fails we fail in synchronism, clinging to it in despair, calling upon it as ourself, mournful and disconsolate, shamelessly tenacious of it, fain to grope a way from out it, all ungrateful for its hospitable sanctuary, weeping and praying for an immortality this thing has never craved.
And I beseech you, when from your pulpits you behold the helpless faces of the sinners moving to your wrath and bowing in the trouble of your displeasure—I beseech you to remember these meritorious benefits. This edifice of dust and passion, whereof you too are in the bonds, should plead with you for mercy; a voice in it should cry out upon your clamant indignation, asking a little pity by reason of its own malignant composition. Here stands the body humbled before the magnificent soul, itself the plea for its own pardon. To the one falls the burden of the long day; to the other is meeter that divine communion to which you would exhort us. If, indeed, we stand between God and the brute, pardon us a little that we divide our interests unevenly. We have no right to make exact comparisons; doubtless we are gone astray with the body in which we lie, our close and narrow prison-house, our exigent and sleepless tyrant. I would have you to reflect how ceaseless is its vigilance, how distressing its penalties, and, recalling .the long slavery of our fathers, to stay your denunciation of the habit in ourselves. We have been well-instructed in the truth, and the blood of goodwill is in us; the more part of us have set out to be careful of the right. From our mothers at birth we took the gift of excellent intention, and were framed for honour in her eyes, full of promise and hope. I dare guess there be few of us that have not made some gallant endeavour to deal honourably by our heritage, to cleave unto the better way, to spur the dull body from its baser tastes. Out of its ignorant eyes the child looked upon life and spake scorn of its wickedness, marvelling at the lapses of the half-divine. Surely therein the image of God was come to dishonourable uses, his trust betrayed, his hopes foregone, his faith shipwrecked, his pride swallowed in abysmal degradation. But soon the facile-growing body would outlap the soul; slowly the effort ceased, the wonder died, and the infernal prison-house, our fort and garrison, compact, inexorable, closed round the struggles of its fearful tenant. Life then, you must consider, took an added shade of horror; for he that was most surely half-divine was nought now but the fell animal of his ascendants, pleased with its pleasures, hedged by its afflictions, stayed by its limits. The iron mould, growing ever more rigid, held in its core that nobler part incarcerate. And this iron flesh, our kind and goodly servitor, at once our gaoler and our bodyguard, is the blind subject of its own strict laws; which we too thus come to follow and obey. And this body which is death is the sole vehicle of life.