The Bible says that the days of our years are three-score years and ten, or, in other words, that the allotted period of an ordinary life is 70 years. Now, in 70 years the heart would pump 164,389,786 gallons; or, to give it to you in barrels, it would make 4,566,382 barrels. If you were to place six barrels on a wagon, and this would make a good load for two horses, you would have 761,063 loads of these barrels. If you were to place these teams, with the wagons containing six barrels apiece, with 36 gallons each, at a distance of 25 feet apart, it would make a string of teams stretching away 1,778 miles, or as far as from New York City to Des Moines, in the state of Iowa, or from New York City down to the Gulf of Mexico.
I think you will now be able to understand what a wonderful little steam engine and pump each of us has within our own breast. And it may surprise you when I tell you that Dr. Buck says that the heart at each throb beats with a power equal to 100,000 pounds.
An ordinary engine or pump would soon wear out, but this little engine of the heart goes on beating day and night from the time we are born until we are 70 years of age, if we live to be that old, and even while we rest in sleep, the heart never stops for a moment. Is it any wonder that David said that "We are fearfully and wonderfully made"?
I might tell you many other wonderful things about the heart, but this will have to suffice.
If the natural heart in these bodies of ours is so wonderful, how much more wonderful still is that heart which is the seat of the moral life and character? As the natural heart is hidden away in these bodies of ours, so the spirit or the soul is spoken of in the Bible as the heart, because it is hidden away in the life which we have in these bodies of ours; and it is this moral character and spiritual life to which the Bible refers when it says, "Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."
Questions.—How did David say we are made? Does the machinery in a great factory make much noise? Are our bodies like a factory in this respect? How can we hear the noise inside of our body? Where is the heart located? What does the heart do? Can you tell how water is supplied for a great city? Is the blood carried to all portions of our body in a similar way? How much blood is pumped by the heart in twenty-four hours? What does the Bible say is the allotted years of a person's life? How long a string of teams would it require to carry all the blood which the heart ordinarily pumps in seventy years? Does the heart keep on pumping while we sleep? What is still more wonderful than the physical heart? Can we see either the physical heart or the spiritual heart? Does the fact that you cannot see them prove that you do not have them? Are both necessary to your complete being and existence?
