CHAPTER IV.
MOTHER EARTH.
Our food in the ground.
The food of plants is in the ground, and the roots take it up; but so, too, is the food of animals in the ground. And yet, if we should fill our stomachs ever so full of earth, we should not be nourished. How is this? It is because the food is not in the right condition for us while it is in the earth. It must be changed before our stomachs can do any thing with it.
The plants gather it and fit it for our use.
Now this is just what the plants do for us. They get this food out of the earth for us, and put it into such a condition that our stomachs can use it. I will make this plain to you. We eat bread made from wheat. It nourishes us—that is, blood is made from it. But what is the wheat? It is grain that is made from the sap that comes up in the pipes of the stalk, and this sap is made from what the root sucks up out of the ground. You see, then, that what the wheat is made from is in the ground; and all that the plant does is to take this up out of the ground and make it into wheat, so that our stomachs can use it for food. The plant’s stomach, then, we may say, gathers food out of the ground for our stomachs.
One of the things that we eat is sugar. Where does it come from? It is made from the earth. But if you should put earth into your stomach, no sugar could be made from it in your body. There are some plants that have to do this for us. They make sugar from the earth for us to eat. This part of our food then, may be said to be really in the ground, for what it is made from is there.
The same thing is true when you eat meat. This meat was once a part of the ground. See how this is. Suppose it is a piece of beef from an ox: the grass that the ox ate was made from sap sucked up from the ground; then from this grass blood was made in the ox; from this blood the meat was made; and now from the meat blood is made to nourish you.
Changes in the food while it is becoming fitted for us.
See, now, how many changes the food in the ground goes through in this case before it becomes a part of your body. First it becomes sap; then it becomes a part of the grass; then in the stomach of the ox it is sucked up, and is changed into blood; then it becomes a part of the ox; then it is sucked up in your stomach, and is changed into blood; and now it is ready to be used in your body to make nerve, or bone, or eye, or tooth, or any part of the house of your soul.