Free A Man's Value to Society by Newell Dwight Hillis

handwriting on the rocks and the mind reads earth's romantic story. Looking upward, the vision runs along the milky way for measuring the starry masses and searching out their movements. The ear strains out sweet sounds, and St. Cecilia hears melodies from the sky. Bending over the cradle, the parent marvels at God's bounty in the face of a babe. When the little one goes away the parent copies its face in rude colors, or carves its form in marble. Thus all the arts, sciences and inventions are gifts of the body to man's mental and moral life.
    There is a beautiful story of a company of celestial beings, who, in disguise, entered an ancient city upon a mission of mercy. Departing hurriedly, in some way a fair young child was left behind and lost. In the morning when men came upon the streets they found a sweet boy with sunny hair sitting upon the steps of the temple. Language had he none. He answered questions with streaming eyes and frightened face. While men wondered a slave drew near, carrying a harp. Then the heavenly child signaled for the instrument, for this language he could speak. He threw his arms about the harp as the child about its mother's neck. He touched one string. Upon the hushed air there stole out a note pure, clear, and sweet as though amethysts and pearls were melted into liquid melodies. It was music, but not such music as mortals give to mortals. It was such a song as spirit would sing to spirit, signaling across the streets of heaven. It was a hymn to the mother whom he had loved and lost. With tearful eye and smiling face the little stranger and the harp together wept, and laughed, and sobbed out their grief and song. It was the speech of a child homesick for heaven. What that harp was to the silent boy, the human body is to man's soul within. The soul teemed with thoughts. Fancies surged and thronged within. Then God gave the soul a body, as a harp of many strings. Through it the soul finds voice and pours forth its rich thoughts and varied emotions.
    Consider, also, how nature has ordained the body as a system of moral registration. Nature has a record of all men's deeds, keeping her accounts on fleshly tablets. The mind may forget, the body never. The brain sees to it that the thoughts within do immediately dispose of facial tissue without. Mental brightness gives facial illumination. The right act or true thought sets its stamp of beauty in the features; the wrong act or foul thought sets its seal of distortion. Moral purity and sweetness refine and beautify the countenance. The body is a show window, advertising and exhibiting the soul's stock of goods. Nature condenses bough, bud and shrub into black coal; compacts the rich forces of air and sun and soil into peach and pear. In the kingdom of morals, there are people who seem to be of virtue, truth and goodness all compact. Contrariwise, every day you will meet men upon our streets who are solid bestiality and villainy done up in flesh and skin. Each feature is as eloquent of rascality as an ape's of idiocy. Experts skilled in physiognomy need no confession from impish lips, but read the life-history from page to page written on features "dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, branded by remorse; the body consumed with sloth and dishonored with selfish uses; the bones full of the sins of youth, the face hideous with secret vices, the roots dried up beneath and the branches cut off above." It is as natural and necessary for hidden thoughts and deeds to reveal themselves through cuticle as for root or bud in spring to unroll themselves into sight and observation. Here and now everything tends to obscure nature's handwriting and to veil it in mist and disguise. But the body is God's canvas, and nature's handwriting goes ever on. Each faculty is a brush, and with it reason thinks out the portrait. Even the wolf may give something to the features, and also the snake and scorpion. Soon will come an hour when men will hear not the voice of the