The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, April 1883

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

That wonderful object which you call your body, is actually a machine like the clock, contrived and put together for a certain service. It has for its works, muscles and bones, and blood vessels and nerves. These works have been most beautifully fitted and adjusted: indeed, they are the workmanship of a skill which can not fail. The maker of your body is the great and unerring Power, who has also made all the rest of creation. It is God.

God made your body with supple joints and free limbs; with strong muscles and ready nerves. The machine was perfect when it came from his hands. It was then capable of going better than the best clock that was ever constructed by human ingenuity. It was able even to cleanse, and oil, and repair itself, and it was prepared to continue its orderly movements, without suffering the slightest derangement, for sixty or seventy long years. But when God placed this perfected piece of delicate workmanship at your disposal, he, like the clockmaker with his clock, required that you should at least take care of it, and use it fairly. If, however, you do not do this, then as with the clock, so will it be with your body. If you keep it amid dust and dirt, no other result can come but the clogging of its works, and the derangement of their movements. Out of that dusty old clock-case it is my purpose to draw this very surprising and important lesson in your behoof. Whenever men get out of happiness and ease into wretchedness and disease, it is almost sure to be their own fault, and the consequence of their own doings. Either they perversely and wilfully do something which they know very well they ought not to do, or they do something which they ought not to do, in ignorance.

Comfort and ease are to body and mind, what steady and even movements are to clock-work—signs that the machinery is in perfect order. Discomfort and dis-ease (absence of ease) are to body and mind what fitful and irregular movements are to clock-work;—signs that the machinery is clogged and in disorder. You are always inclined to rebel against discomfort and pain. Never give way to this inclination. Discomfort and pain are friendly monitors, that come to you to perform a kind service. They come to warn you that there is something wrong in and around your own body, which requires to be set right.

You will observe that I have said men nearly always have themselves to blame when they get out of health and into disease. I have said nearly always, because it occasionally does happen that the suffering is not immediately caused by the sufferer’s own wrong doing. This, for instance, is the case when a child has a constitutional disease, which has been communicated to it by a parent. It is, however, even in these instances none the less true, that human blindness or wilfulness leads to the mischief, and this is really the practical point that I am desirous you should see. These are the cases in which, in accordance with God’s law, “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.” The parents have done wrong, and the offspring have to pay the penalty. The line of obvious duty, however, is in no way altered here. If a man suffers because his parents did what was wrong, this really is an additional reason why he ought never to do that which may cause his own children to suffer, in like manner, with himself.

There is this further proof, that even in these cases it really is man’s wrong doing which leads to human suffering. When the children of parents who have done what was wrong, go on doing only what is right through several generations, their offspring at last cease to suffer, and become altogether healthy and sound. The burden of the fathers’ sins is then, at length, mercifully taken off from their shoulders.

Having listened patiently to this little sermon, you would now like me to come to the point, and show you some of the dust and dirt which are scattered around the living body, and which at times get into the machinery to the damage of its working. First of all, in my endeavor to do this, I should like to make you quite comprehend the possibility of there being very weighty matters pressing close round you, which you nevertheless are entirely unable to see, even in bright daylight. Just come out with me, here, upon the road. How pleasant and fresh the day is! Do you not feel the gentle breeze fanning your cheek as you turn up the lane? Yet you can not see the breeze! What is it, then? Certainly it is something, for it touches and even presses against your skin. But it is something, too, which has weight and power of its own. Observe how it shakes the leaves of the trees as it sweeps past them. It is, as you know, the same unseen breeze which also drives round those great mill-sails yonder with such violence, and which grinds as much corn in that mill, as could be ground by the efforts of a dozen horses, kept up to their work by the whip. We have not had to move far, then, before we have come upon something which we cannot see;—before we have proved to ourselves that we must not altogether depend upon our eye-sight for information, even concerning the existence of surrounding things.

But what is this? The breeze is not so fresh here as it was just now at the end of the lane. There is some very disagreeable smell now floating upon it. Here again we can see nothing, any more than we could when we had only the fresh breeze blowing around us. But there must be some cause for the unpleasant odor. The smell gets stronger and stronger as we approach this bank. We climb over the bank, and we find on the other side, in the corner of a field, a manure-heap, from which the smell is evidently poured out. Now that smell is really a vapor, bred of decay in the manure, and then steaming up from it into the air. If our eyes were as sharp as our noses, we should be able to see a host of little bodies rushing up from the manure, and scattering themselves through the air. It is because some of those little bodies strike upon the lining of our noses, as they are drawn in by our breathing, that we smell the unpleasant odor. The nose feels the touch of those bodies as a smell.

Wherever substances which have been alive, are dead and undergoing decay, vapors of this kind are bred and steamed forth. This is the way in which dead things are got rid of; they turn to vapor and crumble to dust. If we could see all the vapors that are being bred of decay, we should be sensible of a thick mist covering the entire face of the land and sea, and rising up from it continually. Some of these vapors have strong smells, like those which issue from the manure-heap; but some of them can not even be smelt, any more than they can be seen.

But these invisible vapors, bred of decay, were not intended to be breathed by living creatures; and indeed, can not be breathed by them without mischief. We are able to stand near the manure-heap for some time without taking any particular harm, because the vapors are scattered as fast as they are formed, and are mingled in small quantities with large quantities of pure air. We thus breathe air tainted with these vapors, rather than the vapors themselves. But suppose all the air were taken away, and you were left standing with nothing around you but these vapors, what do you think would happen to you? You would be dead in less than three minutes, killed by their poisonous power. The vapors which are bred in decaying substances are poison vapors.

You would like to know why it is, as these poison vapors are poured out in such quantities from all decaying substances, that you do not see people dying all around from breathing them. Did I not tell you, in the case of the poison vapors of the manure-heap, that you could breathe them because they were freely scattered into the fresh air? Now just come a few yards this way. You observe the smell of the manure grows less and less. Here you can not any longer perceive it, although the wind is actually blowing over the manure-heap toward us. The fact is, these poison vapors can not bear the presence of pure air. Pure air is the natural antidote or remedy for their poison. The instant it mingles with them it begins to destroy their hurtfulness, and in a few moments it has so thoroughly accomplished this good work that no single trace of mischievous power remains.