But see that beneath all this he has the special Christian teaching with regard to the sanctity of the body thoroughly instilled into him.  If the Incarnation means anything, it means not the salvation and sanctification of a ghost, but the salvation and consecration of the whole man, of his body as well as his soul.  True, the animal body to a spiritual being must always be a “body of humiliation,” but nothing can be more unfortunate and misleading than the epithet in the Authorized Version of “vile” as a translation of the Greek word used by St. Paul.  On the contrary, we are taught that even this mortal body is a temple of the Holy Ghost.

In teaching this there can be no difficulty; you can make use of a child’s natural reverence for a church.  You can say, “What would you think if you heard of some loose lads breaking into a church, and just for the fun of the thing strewing the aisles with cinder dust and all sorts of loose rubbish; tearing out the pages of Bibles and hymn-books to light their pipes, and getting drunk out of the chalice?  You would be honestly shocked at such profanity.  Nay, even in the dire exigencies of war we do not think better of the Germans for having stabled their horses in one of the French churches and left their broken beer-bottles on the high altar and the refuse of a stable strewn up and down the nave.  Yet a church is, after all, only a poor earthly building, built by human hands.  But there is one temple which God has built for Himself, the temple of man’s body; and of that the terrible words are written, and ever fulfilled, “If any man defile that temple, him will God destroy.”  God’s great gift of speech is not to be defiled by dirty talk, by profane language, by lies, or evil speaking.  The organs which are given us for its sustenance are not to be denied by gluttony and piggishness, either in food or drink.  The boy is not to use any part of his body in defiling ways which he would be ashamed for his own mother to know of.  To do so is not only to defile, but—­with the double meaning of the Greek word, which we cannot render into English—­to destroy; to weaken his brain-power, which he wants for his work in life, to weaken his nervous system, lessening his strength thereby and rendering him less able to excel in athletics, and often, if carried to excess, in after-life bringing results which are the very embodiment of the terrible words, “Him will God destroy.”  The full force and bearing of this teaching he may not apprehend.  I have already said that with a young boy the lower appeal never to do anything that is low and dirty and blackguardly will have far more practical weight, and will also avoid laying undue stress on the religious emotions.  But I am quite sure that the Christian teaching of the sanctity of the body must be laid deep and strong with all the force of early impression in a boy’s inmost being, in order that it may lie ready for future use when Nature has developed those instincts of manhood which will teach him its full significance.