" In other words, Jesus stands for
all that is permanently noble and permanently real in human life.
Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time at
length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but
meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can
never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding
generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them
from the Babel of meaningless words.
2. _Body and Spirit._--Souls are "rendered visible in bodies that took
shape and will lose it, melting into air." Thus bodies, and not spirits,
are the true apparitions, the souls being the realities which they both
reveal and hide. In fact, body is literally a garment of flesh--a
garment which the soul has for a time put on, but which it will lay
aside again. One of the greatest of all the idolatries of appearance is
our constant habit of judging one another by the attractiveness of the
bodily vesture. Many of the judgments which we pass upon our fellows
would be reversed if we trained ourselves to look through the vestures
of flesh to the men themselves--the souls that are hidden within.
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