BOWELS OF COMPASSION.
When a phrenologist is examining a man's head, and wishes to know about his heart, he feels of the stomach. There's where the heart lies.
The sacred writer understood it, when he spoke of the "bowels of compassion."
A man utters wiser than he knows, often, when, in a crowd surrounding some object appealing to the heart, he cries out,—
"Gentlemen, have you no bowels?"
The dear Christ suggests the intimate relations between the soul and the stomach, when, before appealing to the hearts of the multitude, he filled their stomachs with good food.
In the Bible there are scores of expressions and phrases which point to the stomach as the seat of the sympathies.
All the bright ones, with subscription papers in their hands, wait till after dinner.
If they catch a man with a perfectly satisfied stomach, they are likely to get a good round sum, even for the Hottentot-red- flannel-shirt-fund.
The fact that the bumps of the heart are in the upper part of the brain, matters little, if the condition of the digestive apparatus controls their action. When I remark that the heart is located in the stomach, it will, of course, be understood in a practical, rather than in an anatomical sense.