GOOD HEALTH AND COMFORT

"I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly."—John 10: 10.

I

N that interesting reply of Sir Oliver
Lodge's to Ernst Haeckel, "Life and

Matter," there is a chapter called “Religion and Philosophy," and in that chapter I remember an illustration that impressed me. There is an old proverb, he says, which goes something like this: "Whatever is true of the whole is true of every part." If a bucket of water is salty, then every atom of it is salty. If a chain of steel links is perfect, then every individual link of which the chain is composed is perfect. For whatever is true of the whole is true of the part. When the physician makes a blood examination he does not draw off a gallon or a quart. Two or three drops from a pin-prick will suffice. He knows that as one drop is, so are all.

The old proverb, says Sir Oliver, is a fallacy. A property can be possessed by a bundle of atoms which the individual atom does not possess. For instance, the earth has an atmosphere, the moon has not. Why? Because the moon is not large enough. If the moon were only three times as large, say, it would

have an atmosphere; that being all that is needed. In order to attract and hold to itself an atmosphere a body must be massive; this is a point of importance because it means the existence of life on the surface of any planet. So, by piling atoms and rocks and stones together into a mighty mass, there comes by and by a critical juncture when the mass is sufficiently aggressive to control the roving gases floating round in space; it gets influential enough to gravitate to itself an atmosphere, and that means of course living things and all manner of wonderful phenomena.

I wonder if it is not true oftentimes that many of us Christians are not aggressive enough to create an atmosphere, either one of our own or by gravitation. We are not large enough it may be; anyway we are not rich and full enough. We are so pitifully small and poor. We are such weak, minimum, negative, anæmic creatures. We are not sun-Christians rejoicing as a strong man to run a race and glorying in his brilliant virtue; we are moonChristians, faint, barren, lifeless, and shining with a borrowed light. There ought not to be simply a step between us and death. The fulness of life should be ours, the surplus of strength should be ours. Sir Andrew Clarke has recently been telling us that it is possible

to live with kidney tissues of three ounces, but that Nature has given us seven ounces more as a reserve fund. One can worry along on three ounces, but he cannot live the life he ought to live; he cannot live a happy life or a full life; he cannot live the life of freedom or joy or peace or satisfaction or victory. It is a more or less invalid life he lives, a sort of uphill tug all the way. He is like a man in debt. Creditors are crowding him on every side.

"Dear Lord, and shall we ever live

At this poor dying rate?

Our love so faint, so cold to Thee!
And Thine to us so great."

Sometimes, in this Southern land, one meets a poor fellow whom some Eastern physicians are cruel enough to send out here to die. Full oft they know he will not live when they send him, and, indeed, I have known cases in which they were sent to be got rid of. To be sure it takes but little persuasion. A drowning man will clutch at a straw. Many an afternoon have I met this lonely soul trudging along the avenue, coughing his very life out at every step, and the sight always sends a pallor of pity to the face. Quite recently it was my duty to call on one of these unfortunates. He had been gradually coming down the ladder, from

the brisk walk to the slow step, from the slow step to a ride in the carriage, from a ride in the carriage to sitting on the porch, from sitting on the porch to just getting up an hour or two each day and sitting in the bedroom. When I saw him he was on this lowest rung. Reclining on his couch pillowed up and struggling for air, he exclaimed, "Oh, Reverend, what would I not give for your exuberance; it almost provokes me."

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This is the life of the tubercular victim, and a sad life it surely is. There is sadness in a short breath and a hacking cough. He is on the decline, we say. We know full well that God does not want His children to live a life such as this. He wants us to live a full life, a free life, an overflowing life, a life bubbling over. My cup runneth over," the Psalmist says. We should be surcharged with vitality. We should feel it leaping through us-tumultuously. The word here used for abounding is the same that is used when the disciples took up twelve baskets full, twelve baskets over and above" what was necessary to feed the multitude. Our Christian life should be 66 over and above"; it should abound like the The trouble with us is that we do not abound. We are not fountains; we are wells. We have to be pumped. There is a drain and

ocean.