There are those who look upon man as simply a higher animal. While attending the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, I saw the skeleton of a large beast which was found in South America, and was supposed to have lived in prehistoric times. It had fingers that looked very much like human fingers: it had all the bones that are in the human body; it had a spinal column with about the same number of vertebrae as there are in the human spinal column; it had bones almost identical in form, as well as in number, with those of the human form. But it was a great beast some twenty feet high, called the megatherium; and the Darwinists tell us that this great beast was the greatest, great grandfather of the human race.GCB April 1, 1901, page 491.10

It seems to me that the time has come in the history of the world and the development of science, and in the development of truth, when we ought to understand that man is something better than simply a very wise, intelligent, civilized beast. A divine writer said, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.” We find in the very beginning of the Bible, in the very first chapter of the Bible, an answer to this question: “God said, Let us make man in our image.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 491.11

Some years ago the old king William, while traveling through the country, stopped at a country schoolhouse, and talked to the boys and girls, held up a piece of rock, and said, “To what kingdom does this belong?” “To the mineral kingdom, sir,” said the boys. He held up a flower, “To what kingdom does this belong?” “To the vegetable kingdom, sir,” they replied. Then pointing to himself, the old king said, “And to what kingdom do I belong?” There was a great silence. No one wanted to say that their great and good king was simply an animal, and belonged to the animal kingdom; so there was silence for quite a little time, until a bright lad arose and said, in a very deferential way, “To God’s kingdom, sir.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 491.12

Now the boy had the right thought. Man does not belong to the animal kingdom. When God made the world, and after all else had been created, he made his own image. He made man to be his witness in the world,—to be god to the world,—and he gave him dominion over everything which he had made, not only the animals, but everything he had made. This dominion meant a great deal more than most of us have been taught to believe. We must look away back to Adam, to the beginning of the race, and to Christ, to form a conception of a perfect man,—man standing in all perfection, king of the world below him, not subject to the beasts, not subject to germs, nor to many things that we find him a prey to at the present time.GCB April 1, 1901, page 491.13

God gave man dominion, and that means that he had power over everything below him. Man lost his dominion by sin. So we find him at the present time in a weakened, deteriorated, degraded state, and this degenerating process we see going on before our eyes. For example, imbeciles have increased 300 per cent in the last fifty years. Lumatics have increased 300 per cent. If that rate of increase should go on for 255 years more, the whole human family would be lunatics and imbeciles.GCB April 1, 1901, page 491.14

Now look at Adam, perfectly sound and healthy, superior to every beast and every germ; nothing could hurt him, nothing could do him harm; superior to the elements themselves. We see some little evidences of this superiority still lift in the world. For instance, there is the carrier pigeon, which has the homing instinct to such a wonderful degree. Take one of these pigeons five hundred miles away from home, and let it loose, and it goes straight to its home. It has an instinct that leads it home. That same thing must have been true of man once, as well as of the pigeon to-day. There are other animals that can not be very easily lost. It is difficult to loss a dog or a cat. Even when taken far away from home, they can find their way back.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.1

Conscience is perhaps all that remains of that instinct in man. But man has other instincts to guide him. I presume 20,000 people have asked me what to eat. Animals do not have to be told what to eat. I never had a horse or a cow come to me to know what to eat. But man does not know what to eat. He has lost his “horse sense” about his diet. He has lost his pigeon sense; and he has lost nearly all his senses. He is supposed to be guided by reason; but instinct is a better guide than reason, my friends. Why?—Because instinct is God speaking. Instinct is the voice within us, saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it.” The Bible tells us of that voice “behind us,” the text says; but the voice within us is the real thing,—a voice, not behind us, but within us, above our reason and our intelligence. It is this thing that I want to talk to you about to-night, this life within. So I am going to have thrown upon the screen a few pictures, which will act as texts upon which to hang a few remarks.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.2

First of all, I want to call your attention to the fact that there is a great life all about us, which we do not see or think about. To a man that has not studied nature, the world is dumb. If we have not studied nature, we do not see very much to interest us. The Indian sees a great deal more than the man who has dwelt in the city.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.3

Some time ago in a slum Sabbath-school in Chicago I held up a blue flower, and said to the children, “What color is this flower?” Some said it was red, others thought it was yellow, blue, or green. Those children had not seen many flowers, and did not know much about them. They did not know anything about nature. And some of us are just about as stupid as those children were.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.4

Go down to the seashore, or to one of the great chalk cliffs in England, or away out West, and take a little grain of chalk, and put it under the microscope. Go down to one of the great phosphatic deposits in Florida or the Carolinas, and put a little of that under the microscope, and you will find it made up of shells, the skeletons of animals which once lived. It is almost inconceivable that there could have been a sufficiently large number of animal skeletons to make these great masses of chalk. The animals are so small that you can not see them with the naked eye. Half a dozen of them could rest on the point of a pin, and yet they are all covered with the finest markings, as if made by an engraver’s tool.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.5

We do not have to go away back in the ages to find evidence of this microscopic life all about us. Go to some stagnant pool, where you find the water covered with green slime, take a little speck of it, and put it under the microscope, and you will find this green scum all alive with curious little creatures swimming about. Nobody know, whether they are vegetable or animals because when you get to the dividing point between animal and vegetable, there is almost no distinction; there are swimming vegetables as well as swimming animals. The fact that the animal has power to move around does not determine whether it is an animal or a vegetable. This life is below the power of the human eye to discover; it requires a microscope to bring out these wonders of nature. The things that we tread upon are all alive, and this life is marvelous, wonderfully active in growth and development.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.6

In the Alps a few years ago the people woke up one morning, and saw the snow all covered with red for many square miles. Nobody knew what it was until they made a study of it, then they found that it was a microscopic vegetable that had spread over the snow. They called it red snow, but it was not snow at all, but life that had developed with marvelous rapidity. Hundreds of square miles were covered with this life.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.7

Take the sunflower, for example. It looks straight at the sun. It watches and follows the sun all day long, looking straight at it all the time; and as the sun dips down below the horizon, you see that sunflower still looking at it; and as the sun turns around and comes up in the morning, the flower is looking toward the sun rising. It is God in the sunflower that makes it do this.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.8

The four-o’clock will bloom at that time of day. How does it know when to bloom? Someone has a series of flowers that bloom at different hours, so that by watching the flowers, one can tell what time of day it is. How does the flower know when to bloom?GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.9

Some of you have watched a flower winding up a string, a morning glory winding around a string. Perhaps you have seen a vine climbing up a lattice, and you have watched the end coming out, and turning in, back and forth, between the interstices of the lattice. How does the vine know what to do? There is an intelligence that is present in the plant, in all vegetation.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.10

When we come a little higher in the scale of animal life, we find the cell. In an animal we find an association of individual cells gathered together to do business in harmony. Just as in a community of several men there are some who are blacksmiths, some carpenters, some dressmakers, some bakers and cooks, some common laborers, a few doctors, a few preachers, and other people, and each one has his office to perform. It is just so with the animal cells. Each cell is independent of all the rest, just as each man in a community is independent. You can not see the individual cells with the naked eye, but through the microscope you can see, in a drop of blood about large enough to hang on the point of a pin, five millions of these cells. A process is continually going on in these cells. The protoplasm in these cells grows and changes; it is found in very curious forms and shapes. It divides up into little pieces of just the same length and shape; then these little pieces all split from end to end. After they split, they separate; half of them turn one way and half the other way, and go to the other end of the cell. Then the whole mass begins to break, and shortly afterward it splits in two, and then we have two cells instead of one. That is the way the cells multiply, and that is the way the human body grows. You can see the whole thing going on through the microscope; you can see them moving along in just the same order as a company of well-trained soldiers, keeping perfect time, marching and counter-marching. When we see all these little cells marching along in such perfect order, we feel that we can almost hear the divine voice speaking to these particles, issuing orders to them. We can see there is a divine Master there, who is certainly directing every movement.GCB April 1, 1901, page 492.11

This thing can not happen by itself, my friends. In your blood there are five million cells in every little drop of blood, and every cell is made in the way that we have described. This process is not uncommon, it is nothing extraordinary, but it is constantly going on. Some of us have been in the habit of thinking that man was created away back somewhere in the ages, and that after man had been made and placed on the earth, God rested from his work, and that he has never worked any since, but that things have been taking care of themselves. Some of us have thought that the Lord set the world going through space, and that ever since it has been going all of itself. I finally figured the problem up in this way: We will suppose, for instance, that the earth is a big cannon ball. I got the formula which cannoneers use when they want to send out a cannon ball, and found how much gunpowder it would take to shoot the earth off into space, and make it go as fast as it is going now, at the rate of about thirty miles a second. How much gunpowder do you suppose it would take? I found that it would take eight hundred times as much as the earth itself weighs. But after it is started, it must be kept going. The earth does not lose a moment of time. Astronomers tell us that not one twentieth of a second has been lost during the past two thousand years. Why?—Because there is a power behind it that will keep it going; it is not a thing that is moving itself.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.1

Christ said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” The purpose of my talk here to-night is to give you some idea of how God is working now. Job said, “The Spirit of God hath formed me.” God did not form Adam and then make him responsible for all the people who followed him; but God is working to-day just as much as he did in creation. I want to keep before your minds the thought that God makes you now just as much as he made Adam; God is working in us to-day in exactly the same way that he worked in making Adam. A cell that is resting,—for instance, a white corpuscle in the blood,—is round, like a drop of jelly. In a moment it changes its form, and starts off to travel. It has no feet to travel with, but it makes a foot, and with the foot it pushes itself along until it has traveled quite a distance. Now this cell gets hungry and wants something to eat. It has no mouth, so it makes a mouth on the spot,—it makes a little indentation in the side of its body, putting out one lip, and then another, and thus forms a mouth, and then takes in a bit of chlorophyll or protoplasm. But it hasn’t any stomach; how is it going to digest it? It makes a stomach. All that is necessary is to get that speck of food inside, and it will digest it, because it is all stomach; it is all mouth; it is all feet; it is all brain; it is all nerves; it is all everything. It is one of those little ultimate specks of life complete in itself. It is nothing but a speck of transparent jelly, yet it has in it everything that is in the most complex animal form.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.2

A bone in the human body is not a very interesting thing, but saw off a very thin slice of it, put it on the grindstone, and grind it down until you can see light through it, and then rub it down a little thinner still, then attach it to a piece of sealing wax, and put it under the microscope, and you will see some very interesting things. Here are some little dark places. They are hollow spaces. Inside of one of those spaces, when the bone is alive, is a little living creature similar to a jelly drop. Every one of these specks of life is at work; their work is to build bone. When a bone is broken, these bone cells, as they are called, go to work to make new bone to take the place of the old bone. Of themselves they have no more power to work than a grain of sand or a piece of sawdust; but there is a power in them that is working through them. Each little creature is an instrument, and there is a divine life in it.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.3

Now I will tell you one of the most wonderful things that is known in the whole human body. The bones have in the center of them a substance called marrow. The ordinary bone marrow is white; another kind is red. In the red marrow of the bones the blood is manufactured. We have about five million corpuscles in every minute drop of blood, and we have from ten to fourteen pounds of blood in our veins. The blood corpuscles live about six weeks, and then die, and new ones must be created. This creating process is carried on largely in the bones. There are some other parts of the body where corpuscles are made, but they are made chiefly in the bones.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.4

So the bones are not simply sticks to support the body, or, as is often stated, a sort of framework to hold the body in shape, but they perform one of the most important functions of the entire body—the making of blood.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.5

There are other wonderful cells in this body, for instance, the muscle cells. As you bend the arm and contract the muscle, the muscle does not contract all together in a mass, but it contracts because each one of those little minute fibers, perhaps not more than one four hundredth of an inch in diameter, contracts.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.6

We have five hundred muscles in the body, and they are all controlled by the will, the mind. When I strike with my hand or beat with my fist, there is a will behind the hand and the fist. My muscles do not act unless there is a command to contract. The thing that is efficient and all essential is the will, it is the commanding power.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.7

The heart is a muscle. The heart beats. My arm will contract and cause the fist to beat; but it beats only when my will commands. But here is a muscle in the body that beats when I am asleep. It beats when my will is inactive and I am utterly unconscious. It keeps on beating all the time. What will is it that causes this heart to beat? The heart can not beat once without a command. To me it is a most wonderful thing that a man’s heart goes on beating. It does not beat by means of my will; for I can not stop the heart’s beating, or make it beat faster or slower by commanding it by my will. But there is a will that controls the heart. It is the divine will that causes it to beat, and in the beating of that heart that you can feel, as you put your hand upon the breast, or as you put your finger against the pulse, an evidence of the divine presence that we have within us, that God is within, that there is an intelligence, a power, a will within, that is commanding the functions of our bodies and controlling them.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.8

Notice what this heart does: It has the blood to circulate. The corpuscles of the blood come into the heart, and the heart forces them all out, and sends them around the body; then they come back to the lungs laden with impurities. In the lungs these impurities are exchanged for the life-giving air, and the blood again enters the heart, and is forced out into the body again. So the blood is the means by which the body is purified.GCB April 1, 1901, page 493.9

More than that, the blood contains these wonderful living cells that you see. The red cells simply carry in the oxygen, and carry out the carbonic gases; that is about all that they do. But the white corpuscles have a more wonderful faculty and power. It is their duty to travel through the body, creeping into every nook and cranny, getting into every minute crevice and corner, where they are actively engaged in removing everything that does not belong there. They have a wonderful intelligence; but their movements are not directed by our will. What makes these cells move about in this way and perform their functions? There is a power there which is none other than the power of God. These little cells find something in the body that does not belong there, and they really swallow that thing up. For instance, if a lot of typhoid fever germs are injected into the blood of a healthy man, in a couple of hours you can not find one of those germs in his body. What has become of them? They have been captured and eaten up by these cells.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.1

I suppose there is not a person in this Tabernacle but has had at some time tubercular bacilli in his blood. If we should take off some of the dust from the walls and place it under the microscope, we would find tubercular germs, and also other kinds of germs. Every church, every large audience-room, every public hall, every sleeping-car,—in fact, every place which is frequented by man is civilized lands, is infected, and if you would gather a little of the dust in these places, and place it under the microscope, tubercular and other kinds of germs would be found. This has been proved again and again by microscopic investigations.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.2

Why are we not all dead of these diseases, then?—Because of these wonderful little cells in the body, that are actively engaged in hunting up these cells, and destroying them. There is One who gives intelligence to these cells, and guides them in their work.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.3

Some years ago I made an experiment. I took a frog and prepared it so that I could see these little cells at work in that frog. Then I scratched the foot with the point of a pin, so as to irritate it, and watched it. In a little while there were hundreds of these cells at work, repairing the injury that I had done. When you have a boil, and it opens and is discharged, perhaps you say that a large amount of impure matter runs out, but this is not the case. It is these cells, these living cells, that have sacrificed their lives to save yours. These cells have caught up the impurities, they have come in there to eat up and destroy the germs, and they themselves have died, and that is what makes that white pus.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.4

The impurities are not carried out in the boils, but the boils are evidence of the impurity of the blood. That is the reason why we ought to keep our blood pure. When you find a crop of boils coming, you may be sure you blood is impure and impoverished, because if you had not had impure blood, you would not have had the boils. These cells endeavor to destroy all the germs, so that they do not have a chance to multiply sufficiently to create a condition of disease. The germs get the start when the cells are not in a healthy condition, and then disease results.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.5

Now I want to notice some of the wonderful laboratories of the body, where God works. Here is the liver, lying close to the stomach. It has a great many things to do. I told you a little while ago that the red corpuscles live only about six weeks, and then die. Millions are dying every minute. What becomes of them?—They are carried to the liver and for a purpose. The liver destroys them and makes use of the remaining fragments in the coloring of our hair, in the photographic chamber of the eye, and in the coloring of the bile and some of the liquids of the body. The pigments of the skin are colored by the remains of these cells. These are some of the uses to which these millions of dead cells are put by the liver.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.6

The kidneys do a similar kind of work. The liver is a closed door. When a man has eaten vinegar, or mustard, or pepper, or pepper-sauce, or any of those awful things, the liver must take those poisons and destroy them, to keep them out of the body. When a man takes tobacco, the poison of nicotine, into his system, the liver does the same thing; when a man drinks alcohol, the liver has to do the same work. When a woman drinks tea or coffee, it is the same thing,—the liver must be called upon to destroy those poisons, or otherwise they would kill the person who had swallowed them. The liver is continually at work in this way.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.7

The kidneys, on the other hand, are an open door to carry out all of these poisons. Every time I have a thought or an impulse, poisons are formed, and the kidneys must carry these poisons out. These two faithful servants of the body are continually working together. They keep the body free from poisons, and so the life within the body is not entirely destroyed by the accumulation of poisons.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.8

As we go on through life, the poisons are destroyed less and less perfectly as the liver wears out. The more we take into our body, the less perfectly the liver can destroy the poisons. That is one reason why it is not good for man to eat meat; for meat is full of poisons. It is dead, a corpse, nothing more nor less. When we eat this dead flesh, we take into our body the poisons that are in the corpse; and these corpse poisons, when taken into our bodies, impose extra labor upon the liver to dispose of the poisons which the liver must destroy and which the kidneys must remove. Consequently these organs, intended to serve the body only in its necessary functions in removing the poisons generated within the body, just as the chimney carries off the smoke and gases from the stove and the fireplace,—these organs are not able to do their proper work, and neglect it, and these poisons accumulate in the body; then the blood-cells degenerate, and the tissues degenerate, they get hard and brittle, and break, and the liver becomes clogged with these wastes, and the kidneys do not do their work properly; and then we get diseases, and fall victims to various forms of disease or grow old prematurely. This is one reason why carnivorous animals live a shorter time than the herbivorous. This is the reason why a vegetarian is a longer-lived man than the one who eats meat. The very same thing is true of all other kinds of poisons taken into the body.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.9

We have the cells in the stomach that are actively engaged in making gastric juice. We have similar glands that make the saliva. How do these glands know they ought to make gastric juice? How do they know what kind of juice to make? How do they know how much to make? The amount of gastric juice made is just adapted to the quantity of food taken into the stomach. If the stomach takes in one ounce of food, there is enough gastric juice formed to digest it; and if a pound of food is taken, just enough gastric juice is made to digest it. There is a wonderful intelligence manifested all the time. It is not human intelligence. When the food is gotten out of the mouth into the stomach, it is out of the control of the will. There is another will that controls things in the stomach,—another intelligence, another power, that is entirely independent of the mind. It is the same power that controls the processes of digestion, the action of the liver and of the intestines.GCB April 1, 1901, page 494.10

Here is an example of intelligence in nature,—the sundew. When a fly touches any of the tentacles, they open, and turn down around the fly and capture it. If you put a little meat on it, they do the same thing; but if you put on a little particle of dust, they will not close. Therefore, a great many plants that live on flies and insects are called carnivorous plants. There is the Venus fly trap, for example. When a fly touches a little secret spring, it springs a trap, which catches what is in it. There are several hundred different kinds of these insect plants, and they have a great many ways of catching flies. What is it that makes this plant know that there is a fly there? There is a power there similar to that of the human mind. The fly gets into the little Venus flytrap and is caught, and then there is a secretion formed in the same way that the gastric juice is formed, the same way pepsin is formed in the stomach of animals, and the plant has the power to digest that little fly. It shuts up two or three weeks, and digests all there is of it. Sometimes these plants grow in dry, sandy places, where they find all the nitrogen they need in the soil, then they do not catch flies. They are not carnivorous naturally. God never made animals or plants carnivorous. The squirrel eats flesh only when it can get no nuts. The lion and other carnivorous animals are naturally nut eaters. Flesh is the nearest thing to nuts, and when we try to find anything that is like nuts, we must go to the animal kingdom. Flesh contains the nitrogen that is found in nuts.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.1

Here are some liver cells. The liver is engaged in manufacturing bile, which is used in many kinds of work. The blood is the active agent which helps the liver in eliminating poisons from the body, and in making bile. As the blood circulates in all parts of the body, all the food that is absorbed from the stomach and the intestines is carried to every part of the body, to sustain the different organs, but it must first pass through the liver, where a wonderful intelligence is shown in sorting over the food and picking out the poisons. And were it not for this, the first time a man indulged in Christmas dinner, with the chicken pie, pepper, vinegar, mustard, and all those things, he would become loaded down with poisons; but the liver comes to his aid, and carries away these impurities. It stands there as a sentinel between the stomach and the blood, so that the poisons may be captured and destroyed.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.2

Were it not for the liver, the first time a man had typhoid fever he would surely die. The liver is a protection. It is God working through the liver to heal the man of the consequences of his own wrong-doing. Wherever God’s life is, God himself is. You can not separate God and his life. That is the reason why God is everywhere. A few words now about another wonderful mechanism working in the body: the brain and the nervous system. The brain is in the whole body. It is not simply in the head, but in my finger also. Suppose I prick my finger; it is not my finger that hurts, but my brain. If I burn my hand, my brain is injured, because the brain is a part of the hand; it sends down a long finger into the hand, and into every other part of the body.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.3

This is what you see when you look at a little speck of the brain through a microscope—some wonderful brain cells, nerve cells, with filaments that run out and separate into a great number of branches. Here and there is a long filament, or branch, that communicates with the branches that come over from other cells, and thus a network of filaments is established throughout the whole body. Sometimes the long fingers from one cell terminate in a brush that fits in among the branches from other cells. These are not in actual contact all the time, but the instant they come in contact, each cell knows what the other cell is doing. When they are a little ways apart, they do not know anything about it. When we think, the cells join hand, as it were. For instance, suppose I am talking, and I come to the point where I want to speak a name, and I can not think of it. What is happening then? One of my brain cells is reaching away back in my brain to some cell that has the information I want; and is trying to touch it; if it can only reach it, the information will flash across my brain, and I remember. But suppose I am tired out, and can not get energy enough into that nerve-finger to make it stretch itself out far enough so it can touch that cell, and make the contact. That is the reason why we sometimes try so hard to think of something, and can not: we can not put energy enough into these filaments.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.4

That is the best explanation I can give of the way in which the work is done in the brain. There is an intelligence here. Every one of these cells is a separate little intelligence by itself. There is a divine presence in every one of them. Each one is a storehouse of information. There are perhaps five trillions of cells in the brain, and every one is a storehouse of information.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.5

Sometimes the blood-vessels break, it may be in a man’s leg, and the leg is paralyzed. What is it travels over the wires? It is the life of God in these cells that travels over these wonderful little telegraph wires, these nerve filaments. It is God’s life operating there as the power of God; so whenever there is a nerve impression, or an impulse goes out to a muscle, it is God’s power in the muscle. It is God at work. He says, “Ye have made me to serve with your sins;” because when a man sins, he is using God’s power,—this wonderful power that is manifested in his body all the time. He says, “Ye have wearied me with your iniquities.” My friends, let us think of that.GCB April 1, 1901, page 495.6

Some time ago Dr. Rand read that text, “Ye have made me to serve with your sins,” in our mission in Chicago. There was a great burly man present, who stood up there, and with the tears running down his face, he said, “Oh, that strikes my heart. I can not stand that. I am an infidel. I am forty years old. I have been traveling all over the country, lecturing on infidelity. I was going by here, and I heard the singing, and came in, and you have read that text. I never knew God was that kind of God. I did not know God dwelt in me. I did not know I made him serve when I cursed him.” And he dropped on his knees, and confessed his sins. Certainly at that moment he had an appreciation of what God is. God goes down into the depths of sin in order that he may bring us back again. He stays with us in our sinning and wrong doing. Oh, it seems to me that that must appeal to us,—the fact thatGCB April 1, 1901, page 495.7

God is dwelling in us, and is serving when we sin.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.1

Here are some cells that are large, gray, dense, plump, and round; what you see inside of these cells corresponds to gunpowder in a magazine,—they are full of powder, or energy. This is the condition of the brain cells of a wide-awake man full of energy. Here are other cells that are lean and pale; they have few granules in them. They are tired, their store of energy is exhausted.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.2

The cells get their energy from our food. What is it that gets the energy from it?—It is the pure air that we take in, the oxygen; if we did not take this in, we could not expect to get energy from food. Oxygen is the means by which we secure the energy from the food; and it is secured from it in the same manner that it is gotten from gunpowder; it must be burned before you can get the energy out. Air is the means by which the life-giving material is conveyed into the body and the poison is conveyed out. And when these cells work, the poison is worked out; and the blood must carry it away, or it would paralyze the cell; and when the cells become paralyzed by the poison formed by the work which it has been doing, they are cleansed by the fresh air, and the brain is washed out; the oxygen burns up the poisons and vitalizes the cells, and we can go on working again.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.3

What is this life in these cells?—It is divine energy, brought to us from our food. How does it get into the food?—It comes down in the sunlight. So when we look at the sun, we see the glory of God; and when we see what the sunlight is doing, we see a manifestation of the power of God. This same power comes into us from food. So you see how important it is that we should take live food, food that has an abundance of life in it. What we want is life, and we want life more abundantly; and we get it from the food when we take it first hand. Every butcher-shop ought to be labeled “Second-hand Food Store.” In animal flesh we have food and poison; in vegetable food we have life only. When we take this life into our bodies, it will replenish the life of our bodies; but when we take an animal body, we take food, but we also add the elements of death to our bodies; and so we take both life and death.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.4

There is something else in the body that is still more wonderful than this: it is the sympathetic nervous system. There is a wonderful brain in the skull; but there is a still more wonderful brain in the abdomen—the abdominal, or sympathetic brain. This brain sends out its branches to the stomach and the intestines; they follow the blood-vessels, and go into all parts of the body. The brain in the skull is controlled by the will, and the brain in the abdomen is controlled by a will, but not by the human will. This abdominal brain has charge of digestion, of liver action, of skin action, of heart action, and of lung action, to some degree. It has charge even of brain action, because it builds the brain; and of all the processes of nutrition,—the healing of the body; these processes are carried on under the direction of this abdominal brain. So we see that in the abdominal brain we have a manifestation of the divine will in the body. Every minute blood-vessel is controlled by nerves from this abdominal brain.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.5

Here we can see the importance of proper dress. When a woman wears her clothing so that the abdominal brain is interfered with, the stomach is crowded out of place, and thus the brain is interfered with and injured, and hindered in its proper functions.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.6

When we sit, it is important for us to take pains to sit erect, and to carry the chest well up, so as to leave this abdominal brain plenty of room to come up into its place.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.7

A girl came into my office one day. She sat all bent over, with her chest hollowed, her shoulders and head thrown forward, and looking as if she did not have any life in her. I asked her what was the matter, and she said her mother sent her to see me about her lungs. The mother was afraid she was going to have consumption. “Well,” I said, “I don’t think you look as if you are going to have consumption. Why do you think you are going to have consumption?” “Well,” she said, “I have no chest.” I told her to stand up, to raise her chest, and throw her shoulders back, to stand erect, and then I found that she had a splendid chest; she had been carrying it behind instead of in front, where it belonged.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.8

There are many persons who carry their chests behind instead of in front, and then the abdominal viscera are crowded down out of place; but when you lift the chest, the viscera are lifted also.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.9

The other day I saw a man who had kidney trouble. His right kidney was two or three or four inches below the place where it belonged. He was all stooped over, and was not standing upright. I told him how to stand, and just as soon as he stood erect, the kidney came back into place. When the kidney is out of place, it pulls on the great sympathetic nerve, and causes a great deal of trouble.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.10

Now take the eye. In the back of the eye is a little spot that represents the sun of the eye. That is the most sensitive spot; it is where the image is formed. How is the image formed?—The back of the eye is dark—a dark chamber. There is a membrane that lies behind the nerves, and the nerves are spread out in a very thin sheet. This membrane forms a black coat for the eye, called the choroid. This is formed from the coloring matter sent to the eye by the liver. When a photographer takes a picture, he lets the picture fall upon a piece of glass which has been coated with silver, and the object makes dark lines on the glass. This is called the negative: the sunlight turns the silver black, so it makes a black image. In the eye, the very opposite is the case. The light blots out this coloring matter which is on the outer curtain. If you look at a cross, for example, there will be a white cross formed in the eye. When you look away from the cross to another object, that white space has to be filled in, the choroid has to place more coloring matter over that space before you can see anything else. How is that process performed?—It is performed by a creative act: a creation takes place every time you look at a different object, the creation of coloring matter to obliterate the picture on the eye, and to prepare the eye for another picture. So in the very simple process of seeing, there is a creation taking place all the time. Some of us have been such heathen that we did not know that.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.11

Just as I was ready to start down here from the Sanitarium, I was called to the office to see a gentleman, and I met a Catholic bishop there. He came here to visit a parishioner of his, who has had an operation at the Sanitarium. He said, “Doctor, I am glad to see you, and I am glad to see that you are doing such a good work here. I understand you are the head of it.” “No,” I said, “I am not the head of it. I hope and believe that God is the head of it.” He said: “That is true, of course; that is true.” Then he went on to say, “God is the head of everything; he is the head of you, and he is the head of me. When I put out my hand or my arm, and draw it in, there is a creation. God is creating in my arm the power with which I use my arm.” “Do you really believe that?” I asked. “Why, that is exactly what I believe,” he answered. “Of course I believe it. It is certainly the truth.” “Well,” I said, “I believe that, too. That is what I am going to talk about to-night down at the Tabernacle.” God is in me, and everything I do is God’s power; every single act is a creative act of God. A great many of us have not got so far along in pathology as to know that; but this Catholic bishop was talking the same lesson I am trying to talk to you to-night. He believes it; he knows it. So many of us believe that God is away off somewhere, and does not dwell near by. God himself tells us that he is nigh unto us, and not far away.GCB April 1, 1901, page 496.12

I want to tell you a wonderful story. I have been showing you here some of the cells of the body, living cells. They are all under the control of the divine life, or Spirit, of God himself. The creative power is going on within us just the same as it was manifested in Adam. When God made man, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. What was that breath of life? I could give you a few texts from the Bible in just a moment, if I had the time, to show that that breath of life is the life of God himself. It is the Spirit of God. It was not simply a little wind. Somebody says that is just simply the breath that blows out and in; but you could not possibly make a man live by blowing wind into him. The only thing possible to make Adam a live man, was to blow the life of God into his nostrils. Some people have tried to make people live by blowing air into them. I have myself tried, a great many times, to resuscitate patients by blowing wind into them. I have blown air into the lungs, inhaled the lungs with pure air, and forced oxygen in to make the man live; but he did not live; he was a dead man just the same. I have worked hours and hours over a dead man to try to resuscitate him; but breath—air—will not make a man live. Fish do not breath. They extend their gills out in the water, and move back and forth, but they have no breath. Through the gills they absorb the oxygen in the water. There are a great many animals that do not have to breathe the way we do; but the breath of life is in every animal. It is all the life of God,—the Spirit of God. It is the divine life in man, and it is this divine life that creates every new blood cell. Every time we eat a meal and digest it, it is God who does it. He must make the extract—the juice—the saliva; and all the energy man can possibly manufacture is simply the power of God manifested through him as an instrument. The more completely man’s will is surrendered to God’s will, and the more perfect the instrument, the greater will be the power manifested. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; but the reason why God’s power is not manifested in us or through us any more than it is, is because of our wrong attitude toward God; we are in such a condition that God can not manifest himself through us.GCB April 1, 1901, page 497.1

I have been asked if I believe in divine healing. Yes, I most certainly believe in divine healing; I don’t believe in any other kind of healing. Some people are so mistaken, or so ignorant, as to suppose that doctors can heal. For twenty-five years I have been telling my patients that I have no power to heal anybody. Sometimes a doctor gets a case that he can not heal, and then he calls in a preacher. When they say that to me, I always say that I don’t believe in that; I will not agree to that at all,—that a case that a doctor can not heal, a preacher can heal. I think one is as good as the other. I do not believe a preacher can heal anybody that a doctor can not heal. Doctors can not heal anybody, and as preachers are no better than doctors, preachers can not heal anybody either. All the healing that is done, God does. There is no other kind of healing but divine healing. If you will accept that fact, you will avoid a great deal of confusion, and clear up a great deal of mystery. All the healing there is, is the healing which God does.GCB April 1, 1901, page 497.2

A member in our church called on me some time ago, and asked me to examine his neck. I looked at it, and saw an ugly looking sore. I asked him how long it had been there, and he said, “I have had this sore three years, and it seems to be getting a little worse.” Dr. Rand had clipped off a little piece of it, before I saw it, and examined it under the microscope, and he said it was a cancer. I hardly thought it could be a cancer, so I said to him, “If it had been a cancer, it certainly would have eaten your head off before this time.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 497.3

About a month after this, I saw Dr. Rand, “Did you tell Brother—that that sore on his neck was a cancer?” He said, “Yes; I saw it, and it looked just like a cancer to me, and I thought it was; I told him it was a cancer.” I said, “I can hardly believe it is a cancer, for if he had had a cancer of that sort for three years, it would have taken his head off, and he would have been dead before this time.” We were in the operating room, waiting for a case to be operated upon. Just at that moment our pathologist who had examined that little piece of the sore under the microscope, came in, and I said to him, “What is your report of it?” He said, “It is a cancer, I examined it carefully, and applied the test, and it had every appearance of being a cancer.” Then I thought if that was a cancer, we had better attend to it right away. So I called the brother up over the telephone, and told him to come right up where I was, quick; that we must perform a radical operation at once, or he would lose his life. So he came up. I said to him, “I thought we would like to examine that cancer.” I had rather led him to believe it was not a cancer, but as Dr. Rand had told him it was a cancer, I thought I would introduce the matter in that way, by telling him we would like to look at it. “Why,” he said, “I have no sore; that cancer, or sore, is all well,” I said, “It can not be well; if it is a cancer, we must operate on it at once.” But he said, “It is entirely well—there is no sore or cancer there at all.” Well, we did look at it, and to our utter amazement, there was not the slightest trace of a cancer there. There was only a very slight fresh scar, but no trace of a cancer or anything of the kind.GCB April 1, 1901, page 497.4

“Well,” we said, “this is certainly astonishing. The cancer is getting well without an operation or anything being done for it except to clip off a little piece of it, and that always makes the case worse, it usually spreads faster. What have you been doing?” “Well,” he said, “when this cancer made its first appearance, about three years ago, I concluded that it was time for me to straighten up on health reform, and so I adopted a strict dietary. I have not eaten a particle of meat since; I have not taken anything but the purest foods, and I have lived in harmony with the laws of health as far as I knew. I found that I was improving wonderfully, and that this thing did not grow. It remained there after I had adopted health reform, but it did not increase in size, and now, since you looked at it the other day, it has simply healed up entirely.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 497.5

We sent the specimen of this cancer to New York, and had one of the greatest pathologists examine it. “Why,” said he, “it is one of the most deadly kinds of cancer.” When he heard the story of that cancer, he was amazed beyond measure.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.1

Now I am telling you this for the glory of God, so that you can see that there is a power to heal. It was God that healed that man. The doctors had nothing to do with it. It was through the power of obedience,—living up to the light that he had received,—and God honored his obedience by healing him of his awful disease.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.2

I want to tell you, dear friends, that since I have seen that case, I do not say any more to people who have cancer, that it is a hopeless case, or that they can not get well without an operation, because here is a case which was cured without operation. It was simply healed by the power of obedience. At the same time, if we had seen this cancer before, we should have cut it out or put something on it to destroy it; for God wants us to co-operate with him in ridding the body of disease.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.3

All healing is divine healing. The only healing is divine healing. We can expect that God will do everything he can for a man when he is sick. If God is a God of infinite love, then he will do for every man that is sick, all he can possibly do for him. Let me put this proposition to you: If God is so loving, so gentle and kind, and so humble that he will serve in a man’s sins, that he will go with a man when he goes down into the very depths of sin,—if God will do that, do you not think that when God sees a man sick and suffering, he will do what he can for him? He will do what he can for every sick man on the face of the earth. God is doing everything he can for him all the time. We appeal to God sometimes as if we thought God had forgotten us. We gather together the elders, and get a lot of people together to pray, to ask God not to forget us. Do you think he has forgotten us, when he dwells within us, and directs all the functions within us?GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.4

When a man is sick, what can he do? He can not persuade God by any sort of operation to do anything more for him. But he can change his attitude toward God. Instead of being rebellious against God, and destroying the temple in which God dwells, he can stop all those things, put himself in harmony with God, submit to him, and begin to co-operate with him, and then he will begin to reap the fruits of obedience. If he begins to cultivate health, he will get his health to growing and increasing; but if he continues to sow the seeds of disease, he will reap disease.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.5

Why do we get sick?—Simply because we rebel against God. In fact, we do not get sick until after we are ill. A man does not come down with typhoid fever when he is well; he does not have paralysis when he is well; he is not stricken with apoplexy when he is in good health; he does not get down with Bright’s disease when he is well. When well, he is above all these forms of disease. He may look well, but he is not well.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.6

God made man superior, and gave him dominion over all these various diseases. When a man has violated all the laws of his being, he loses this dominion. Suppose he swallows some typhoid fever germs. If he had a healthy stomach, he could digest typhoid fever germs. But the stomach by abuse loses its power to digest even potatoes and other vegetables, and so he can not digest typhoid fever germs, which are also vegetables growths, and in consequence the germs grow until there are more than he can dispose of, and so he gets under the power of disease. The very same thing is true of many other maladies which I might mention.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.7

The important thing is to live above disease. I was talking with a lady some time ago. The germs of consumption had gotten into her lymphatic glands, and great masses of tubercles lay under her neck. All I could do was to advise her to give special attention to the principles of health. I lost sight of her for a time, but met her again the other day, and she was in blooming health, rosy-cheeked, vigorous, bright, and as happy as she could be. I asked her how she was feeling, and what brought about the change. “O,” she said, “I am in excellent health. I managed to get above the disease after a while, and now I am living above it.” She had climbed up and up until she had gotten above the power of this disease, and the tubercular germs were really driven out of her body. We can make our bodies inhospitable to germs, so that our blood cells will swallow and destroy them.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.8

That is why we have been given this great light on health reform in these modern times, when the plagues are just upon us. There is a case of the plague down in Ann Arbor now. A student who was inspecting some of the germs of the bubonic plague, through careless handling, contracted the disease. The physician who attends him covers himself all over with a rubber suit, with only two little apertures in it so that he can see, because the plague is so contagious, and he does not want to catch it.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.9

When this great plague, the bubonic plague, the “black death,”—breaks out around us, some of these days, what will be our protection? It will be all over the world. The rats will carry it; cockroaches carry it, bedbugs carry it, vermin of all kinds get it, from the dead bodies of those who have died, and communicate it to people. There is no possibility of escaping it, except one, and that is to be above it, to be up at the top; there is a safe place at the top. If a man lives down in the quagmires of disease, so that his body becomes a mass of corruption through the gratification of the appetite, he will certainly become a victim of these diseases. It is not safe for us to live for the purpose of gratifying the appetite in violation of the laws of health. We will not have a chance to live that way very much longer. These diseases will come upon us and cut us off, and the only protection is to get above and live above disease. These principles should not be looked upon as a cross or a burden, but as the greatest possible blessing; and we are under the gravest responsibility to give to others the light and truth, that all may understand how to conquer and to live above disease.GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.10

“Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.11

“Blessed is the man whom thou choosest.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.12

“Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.13

“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.14

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”GCB April 1, 1901, page 498.15

THE CANVASSING WORK

THE SHELF BEHIND THE DOOR