AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.[A REMONSTRANCE.]Bythe Author of “John Halifax, Gentleman.”Gray heavens, gray earth, gray sea, gray sky,Yet rifted with strange gleams of gold,Downward, all’s dark; but up on highWalk our white angels,—dear of old.Strong faith in God and trust in man,In patience we possess our souls;Eastward, grey ghosts may linger wan,But westward, back the shadow rolls.Life’s broken urns with moss are clad,And grass springs greenest over graves;The shipwrecked sailor reckons glad,Not what he lost, but what he saves.Our sun has set, but in his rayThe hill-tops shine like saints new-born:His after-glow of night makes day,And when we wake it will be morn.NEW MEXICO.ByRev.SHELDON JACKSON, D.D.New Mexico is Spain in the United States—a region where the Spanish language, customs, and habits prevail, where the debates of the legislature and the pleadings of the courts are in a foreign tongue; a territory where an American feels as one in a foreign country, and is a stranger in his own land.While the latest section to receive American civilization, it was the first to be occupied by Europeans. When our pilgrim fathers were shivering through their first New England winter, New Mexico had been settled half a century. When they were making“The sounding aisles of the dim woods ringTo the anthem of the free,”the Spanish cavalier was chanting the “Te Deum” in churches even then beginning to be venerable with age. And there to-day are the descendants of those brave old Castilians whose prowess made illustrious the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.In 1677 a book was published in London giving an account “of America and all the principal kingdoms, provinces, seas, and islands of it.” Mr. Heylin, the author, thus speaks of New Mexico in volume IV: “Nova Mexicana is bounded on the south with New Biscay; on the west with Quivara; the countreyes, on the north and east, not discovered hitherto, though some extend eastward as far as Florida, extended two hundred and fifty leagues from the town and mines of Santa Barbara, and how much beyond that none can tell; the relations of this country being so uncertain and incredulous that I dare say nothing positively of the soil or people, but much less of the towns and cities which are said to be in it.”New Mexico, as at present constituted, has an area of 121,201 square miles, and in a general way may be said to consist of tablelands, mountains, and valleys. The tablelands rise one above another in well-defined terraces, with an altitude above sea level of from 5,000 feet in the southeast, to 7,500 feet in the northwest. These tablelands cover about two-thirds of the Territory, and constitute the valuable grazing lands. The mountainous region consists of the Rocky Mountains, which enter the Territory from the north in two chains—like the prongs of a fork. The eastern chain terminates a few miles south of Sante Fe, while the western one ends in the broken and detached ranges of the southern section of the Territory. These mountains are rich in gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and coal. Sections of them are covered with valuable timber, and among them are many medicinal springs. The valleys lie between these mountain ranges, and contain the agricultural lands, and are farmed by artificial irrigation. These valleys produce good crops of corn, wheat, beans, etc., and in the southern half of the Territory raise fine apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, and grapes, the grapes up to the present time being more abundant than other fruits. In addition to the above, the Messilla (Ma-see´-ya) valley produces quinces, figs, and pomegranates. Artificial irrigation is supplied from the melting snows of the mountains. The principal streams are the Rio Grande (Ree´-o Gran-da), the Canadian, the Pecos (Pa-cos), the San Juan (San Whan), and the Gila (Hee-la).The Rio Grande River is the Nile of America. It is 1,800 miles long and of almost equal volume from its source to its mouth, flowing hundreds of miles without receiving a tributary of any size, being fed almost entirely from the snows of the mountains. Along on either side of the river are canals conveying the water to the adjacent farms. The water is exceedingly roily and its annual deposit of sediment upon the land increases its fertility.The climate is unexcelled by any portion of the United States—being a succession of bright sunshiny days almost the year through. The country is free from malarial, billious and lung troubles, general debility and asthma.New Mexico has much of antiquarian interest. The mysteries connected with its earlier history and the evidences of former greatness throw a halo of romance around it. The country when first visited in 1536, or ’37, by Spaniards was filled with the ruins of great cities, which ruins are still in existence. In some places, acres of ground are still covered with pieces of broken pottery. The mountains, in sections, are honeycombed with abandoned dwellings, like Petra of old, or with the remains of ancient mining operations, from which were drawn those vast supplies of gold and silver found at Montezuma’s court.In the Cañon de Chilly (de-shay) high up in the face of perpendicular walls of rock are hundreds of ruins now tenantless and desolate. Among some of these ruins which we have visited are sepulchres, about four feet square, of mortar-laid stone, in which we found human skeletons.In the Cañon de Chaco are great buildings with three and four stories of walls still standing, built in the most substantial manner of cut stone and neatly plastered on the inside. The country in the immediate vicinity of these ruins is wild and desolate, and no clew to the builders has yet been found. We only know that years, possibly ages ago, great cities grew, flourished and passed away, leaving extensive ruins as the evidence of their existence.At the close of the sixteenth century the Spaniards took possession of the country, subjugated the native races and made them slaves to work the newly-opened mines. The Spanish rule was so cruel that in 1680 the Pueblos rebelled and drove them from the country. Then commenced a war, lasting many years, making the valley of the Rio Grande classic ground, as the Spanish forces again and again advanced up the valley, only to be driven back by the Pueblos, until, through treachery and dissensions among the native forces, the Spanish were again in full control.New Mexico became known to Americans first through the explorations of Captains Long, Nicollet, and Fremont. La Londe, a Frenchman, was sent by Morrison, of Kaskaskia, Illinois, on a trading trip in 1804. He was followed by James Pursley in 1805. Pike visited there in 1807, and a train of goods was sent in 1812 by Knight, Beard, Chambers, and eight others. This party were seized by the authorities and held as prisoners for nine years. Caravans of traders were furnished with a government escort in 1829, 1834, and 1843.In 1848 New Mexico was annexed to the United States.The majority of the people reside in villages. These are largely of the same pattern, and consist of a large public square, around which are grouped without much attention to regular streets, a number of one-story adobe (sun-dried) brick houses. The individual houses are built around the four sides of smaller squares calledplacitas. The rooms of the house open on thisplacita; also the stable. The buildings are usually one story high, with dirt floors and flat dirt roofs. During the rainy season the roofs leak badly. Among the older houses there are but few that have glass windows. A few others have mica windows. The larger number have an open lattice work, protected in stormy weather by a tight board shutter. The roof is made of poles, covered first with grass, then two feet of dirt, and is used for various family purposes. (2 Kings 19: 26; Acts 10: 9.) The floor is the native earth, beaten hard, then covered with a layer of adobe clay. The fire-place is in a corner, and on three sides of the room a raised bench of clay forms a seat, and also a shelf for piling away the bed blankets during the day. Many ofthe houses, especially of the poorer classes, are without chair, bedstead, or table. Many of the rooms are neatly whitewashed with a white clay found in that region, and the walls hung with crucifixes, mirrors, and lithograph pictures of saints. There is one large opening, or gate, into theplacita, admitting alike the family, donkeys, goats and sheep. The streets are narrow, irregular, and without sidewalks. The roads, worn by the travel of centuries, are lower than the adjacent country, and during a rainy season filled with muddy water. Wagons are scarce, as also are the native carts, some of them with a primitive wheel, constructed from a solid section of a tree.The Mexican’s chief friend is the donkey, and in the streets of the villages are to be seen droves of them loaded with hay, fire-wood, vegetables, crates of fruit, melons, merchandise, casks of whisky, trunks, lumber, etc. It is no uncommon thing to see a drove, each with a heavy stick of timber projecting into the air beyond his head, and the other end dragging on the ground behind him.In the fields are occasional lodges (Isaiah 1: 8) as a shelter while watching the vineyard, melon or grain fields.Roads for foot-passengers and pack-animals run through the grain and corn fields (Mark 2: 23; Matthew 13: 4) and along the unfenced wayside were the graves of the former inhabitants, or the points where the pall-bearers rested in bearing the body to the grave, marked with a rude board cross and pile of stones (Joshua 7: 26; 2 Samuel 18: 17). The women carry water in great jars on their heads or shoulders (Gen. 24: 46).They plow like the ancients with a crooked stick fastened to the horns of the oxen—several yoke of oxen following one another (1 Kings 19: 19).As in the days of Ruth and Boaz, men and women still reap with a sickle and the poor get the gleanings (Ruth 2: 15-23). The grain when reaped is spread out on threshing floors made smooth by packing the earth (Gen. 50: 10; 1 Sam. 23: 1) where it is threshed out by driving around in a circle sheep, horses or oxen (Deut. 25: 4). After cleaning out the bulk of the straw with forks, the wheat and chaff are shoveled into blankets, which by a series of jerks, similar to shaking carpets, toss their contents into the air, the chaff blowing one side and the wheat falling back in the blanket. This process can only be carried on when the wind is favorable; consequently to improve a favorable wind they work all night (Ruth 3: 2). Another process is to lift the wheat and chaff in a bucket as high as the head and empty it slowly upon a blanket spread on the ground. Separated from the chaff, the wheat is taken to a neighboring stream and washed in large earthen jars, after which it is spread upon woolen blankets to dry in the sun.The principal diet of the people ischile colorado(col-o-row). There are several varieties of this fiery dish; one made of beef is calledcarne. A more common dish is made of mutton and calledcarnero. The flesh is boiled to a pulp, to which is addedchile.Chileis prepared by rolling red pepper on a stone until pods and seeds are a soft mass. It tastes as red-hot iron is supposed to taste. It is said that a new beginner on this diet ought to have a copper-lined throat.Many old churches are still in use. They are built of adobe brick, with dirt roof and dirt floor. Some of them possess paintings evidently imported from Spain. There are also many ruder home-made paintings on the walls. They are without seats or pews, the worshippers kneeling or sitting on the floor. They are also generally much out of repair. They contain many images, and in some of the churches a bier with a life-size image of the Savior. At certain festivals this is carried in a procession, and on Good Friday is used to dramatize the crucifixion of Christ. In some of the churches are exhibitions of Scriptural scenes covering the life of the Savior, apostles and early martyrs. Occasionally an image of Christ is rigged with a movable arm, which is turned by a crank. As with the movement of the crank the hand comes up, it is supposed to throw blessings upon the waiting congregation below. Upon one occasion during a long dry spell, they carried an image of the Virgin Mary in stately processions through the fields to secure rain. But the drouth continuing, the people in anger took the image out into the street, took off its costly clothing, and gave it a public whipping. Just then a severe thunder and hail storm came up; vivid flashes of lightning played around them, and the hail destroyed their crops and gardens. Greatly frightened, the ignorant people hastened to re-clothe the image, and prostrate themselves before it in most abject submission. The enclosure in front of these churches, and especially the floor of the church itself, is the favorite burial-place of the people, the holiest place of all being near the altar. Nearness to the altar is graded by the amount of money paid.The Roman Catholic Church, removed from competition with Protestantism, is a wisely constructed machine for extorting money out of the fears and superstitions of an ignorant people. Baptism, confession, blessings, anointing, burials, and mass must all be paid for at a round price. The weeping friends bring the corpse of the loved one and set down the bier before the closed gates of the church. Then money is laid upon the corpse. Again and again has a priest been known to look out, and if he judged that the money was not as much as the friends could afford to pay, refuse to open the gate, and nothing is left for the friends but to continue adding money to the sum previously collected until the rapacity of the priest is satisfied. An ordinary funeral in a churchyard will cost one hundred dollars, if the family has that much. To be buried in some of the churches costs from five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars, according to position. The corpse is carried on a board or bier (they do not generally use coffins), to the place of burial. If the priest goes to the house, he walks in front of the funeral procession. He has on a scarlet dress with a white over-skirt. At his side is a small boy similarly dressed, tinkling a bell. A few yards in the rear is a second priest, dressed in scarlet and white, swinging a burning censer. Around him is grouped a motley crowd of men, women, and children, carrying lighted candles, the men and boys with uncovered heads, and behind all are men firing muskets into the air to frighten away the devil, who is supposed to be hovering around, waiting a chance to seize the spirit of the departed one. If the corpse is that of a child, it is covered with flowers (the corpse of such is called an angel). From two to four children walk with the bearers. Behind these are other children, who are considered more holy than the rabble that follow. These are followed by four children carrying a richly dressed saint under a canopy. If the family are able to pay for it, the priest comes out to meet the procession, and sprinkles holy water over the corpse, then into the grave. After this the corpse is slid off the board into the grave with but little ceremony, and some dirt thrown upon it. Men then get into the grave with a heavy maul and pack the dirt down solid; then more dirt is thrown in and packed down. This is continued until the grave is filled up level with the rest of the floor of the church. The corpses are placed three or four deep in the same spot, and oftentimes the bones of previous burials are thrown up to make room for the new comer. In one instance that came to light, the spade clave in two the head of a child and threw it out. Nearly all the old churches I have visited smell like a charnel house. A few years ago the legislature of New Mexico forbid further burials in the churches.With the advent of railways, miners and Americans, thepeculiar and old-time customs of the country will speedily disappear, and a new era dawn upon the people. Great changes are rapidly taking place, and New Mexico is waking up from the sleep of centuries.January 1, 1881, there were 658 miles of railway in operation, which has been greatly increased since. During 1880 the yield of the mines was $711,300. At the same time there were 400,000 head of cattle and 5,000,000 sheep on its pasture lands. Population, 118,430. The census of 1880 gives 38 Roman Catholic, 7 Presbyterian, and 1 Baptist churches; and not mentioned in the census report, the writer knows of several Methodist and Episcopalian churches.In 1849, Rev. Henry W. Reed, a Baptist minister, opened a school at Santa Fe.In 1850 Rev. E. G. Nicholson commenced a Methodist mission at Santa Fe, which was abandoned two years after.In 1857 Rev. W. J. Kephart, a Presbyterian minister, was sent to New Mexico in the anti-slavery interests, and became editor of the Santa FeGazette. In 1852 Rev. Samuel Gorman, a Baptist minister, entered the Territory and commenced a mission at Laguna Pueblo.These missions were all abandoned at the beginning of the rebellion.In 1866 Protestant missions were resumed by Rev. D. F. McFarland, a Presbyterian minister sent to Santa Fe.In 1869 the writer of this article was appointed Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions for New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. The present Presbyterian strength is eighteen ministers, of whom six are Mexicans.SPECULATION IN THEOLOGY.[H]By theRev.R. S. STORRS, D. D.There are two schemes of religious thought generically in the world, as there has been—and are now to some extent—two systems of astronomical speculation, one obtaining in uncivilized countries, and the other in civilized. One system of astronomical speculation takes the earth as the center around which the heavens revolve. That seems according to our senses; that is the architecture of the heavens according to the natural man. When the Rev. Mr. Jasper, at Richmond, insists that “the sun do move,” he seems to have the judgment and the sense of every seeing man with him. [Laughter.] And we know what comes of it,—uninterpreted and unintelligible and contradictory motions in all the sky; a baffled heaven scribbled o’er with cycle and epicycle. The other system of astronomical speculation takes its start from the sun as the center and the governor of the planetary system, and finds that sun himself, with all his dependent orbs, marching onward through the heavens. And we know what comes of that. (There came a book from Dr. Hill, years ago, which I read with the intensest interest, concerning the relation of the stars.) [Applause.] There comes order and harmony in all the system of the heavens. We measure and weigh the planet in its course. The astronomer catches the comet in its far flight, measures its motion and predicts its course and its return. The butterfly floating in the air is balanced against the sun. Every shell on the beach, every bud on the tree, is brought into relation with the farthest nebula whose lace-work stains the distant azure. It is the astronomy of science; it is the astronomy of advanced and cultivated thought.There are two systems of religious speculation. The one takes man as its center and starting-point, regarding him as a finished fact, practically. In its grosser forms it does not profess to know, as we have been told by the brother who preceded me, whence he came; but it suspects that his nature is evolved out of the brutal. It does not know whither he is going; but it treats the future as the scoffing French sceptic treated it, as at best “a grand Perhaps.” It does not know about God, or whether there be any God other than the sum of universal forces. It has no moral law except a general average of probable experiences. And so it comes to men and tells them to go on and live as they list. It tells them that there is no fear of retribution, no need of atonement, and it has no place in all its compass for any doctrine of regeneration and of the Holy Spirit of God. I do not mean, of course, that everybody who holds this system will accept fully my statement of it. In fact it is sometimes hard to find out exactly how they state it, or what they mean by their statements themselves. I am reminded occasionally of the man who had a clock which somebody criticised, saying, “Your clock, Mr. Jones, does not keep good time.” “Why,” said he, “it does keep perfectly good time, only you do not understand it. The fact is that when the hands on that clock point to twelve, then it strikes three, and what that means is that it wants twenty minutes to seven. [Laughter and applause.] Now if you will keep that in mind, you will hit the right time in every instance.” [Laughter.] Well, I intend to speak very seriously, and yet I cannot help being reminded by some of the language which is made use of in some of these what-we-call agnostic publications, into which the richest Christian words are sometimes brought as if to give a kind of artificial and fictitious consecration to the doctrine which I think a detestable doctrine underneath,—I can not help being reminded of a very careful paraphrase which was made by a very bright and faithful Indian girl at the school at Hampton. Her teacher told her—she did all of this innocently, of course—to take a certain passage of Roman history and write a paraphrase of it in her own words. So she went at it; and when the teacher read the paraphrase she was astounded at finding this statement in it: That “on a certain time the city was made sick by cooking the entrails of animals.” Well, what on earth that meant she could not imagine, nor how it got into this paraphrase, until she turned to the original passage and then she found the statement that “at a certain time the city was disturbed by intestine broils.” [Great laughter and applause.]Now, over against that system stands the theology which starts with God as the center, as the Lord and Sovereign and Judge, as well as the Creator of the earth and men upon it; and it takes what God declares, in that which the history of the world declares to be his Word, and what the devout spirit reverently accepts as the Word of God, concerning himself and man, and man’s need, and the hereafter. Here inspiration and redemption, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, retribution in the future, time as the proof of eternity, come vividly before us as the thoughts of God. He shows them to us in characters as broad as if he had written them in a great theodicy of star-fires and enduring orbs in the heavens. This system of theology does not cast any discredit on human nature; it exalts it by showing it the object of divine solicitude. It casts the splendor and the solemnity of eternity upon the present experience and life of man; and it gives to the Bible an immeasurable and an almost inconceivable importance and value.Now I understand perfectly that the natural tendency of men is to accept the preceding system, as the natural tendency of man is to believe that the earth is the center, and the heavens go around it. Man finds self-consciousness the first element of thought. The impulse of self-assertion appears to be the primary impulse of human nature. It is simply the egotistic man, of whom it might be said, as was said by a friend of mine, speaking rather roughly and not very elegantly about a man who was very egotistic, and who had offended him by his egotism: “I believe that that man thinks that his house is placed where the leg of the compasseswas put down when the earth was made round.” [Laughter.] There is a certain tendency in every human heart to feel that it is central, and that it has rights and privileges and possibilities belonging to itself inherently, and with which no being can properly interfere. And civilization works with its multiple forces and instruments and wealth in the same direction, taking a man feeling his lordship of the earth and reminding him more and more, and encouraging him to feel that he is lord of his destiny, and lord of the hereafter as well. There are certain philanthropic sentiments which work in the same direction, no doubt, tending to make men believe that all will be right hereafter somehow or other, and that after some possible brief unpleasantness in the future there will be a universal deliverance and restoration into holiness and its peace. And the secular spirit of the time, intense, widening, ever increasing, moves in the same direction. It enters into literature; it enters into life on every side; it finds no reality in religion; it believes it a matter of poetic aspiration, or of cultivated literary leisure, or of fine speculation, or of social observance, or possibly of ethics, or more likely of æsthetic art; but the grand reality of religion, as a bond uniting the human soul with the divine, it does not recognize or feel. It is this which gives significance and importance to infidel harangues; it is this spirit which spreads beneath and behind them. The harangues are merely the surface pustules, while the disease is within. They are the red and sulphurous flames, while the fires are underneath. And yet they multiply! The business of this city of Portland could not be carried on on the principles of these harangues. There is not a bank or an insurance company here that would not have to shut its doors if it posted within its walls, “This is an agnostic establishment. [Applause.] It is carried on upon these principles: that there is no God about whom we know anything; there is no hereafter probable; man came out of the monkey; and there is no moral law.” Let such sentiments prevail in this city, and it would have been better if the fire of a few years ago had swept away every house within it, and left nothing but the bay and the beach on which to plant a new town. And yet men love to crowd halls and pay money in order to hear these infidel speculations which are in substance as old as the ages.And thus it comes to pass that religious thought loses its power among those who are not directly touched by such harangues,—that the influence widens continually to make the Bible a neglected book, and to make the Sabbath a secular day, to make the Church a mere convocation of people coming together at leisure to hear a lecture.It is at such times that the spirit of liberalism, as it is called, in religious speculations tending all the time to loosen the bonds and unstring the strength of the Gospel of Christ, finds opportunity and incitement and comes more widely to prevail. Liberalism! I repudiate the term. [Applause.] I do not understand what function liberality has either in the record or in the interpretation of facts. I do not understand how he is a liberal mathematician who makes his calculations bend to the preferences of himself and of his pupils. I do not understand how he is a liberal chemist who feels at liberty to play fast and loose with the principles of his science, and will not quite affirm whether gunpowder will explode or not when fire touches it. How is he a liberal chart-maker who rubs out all the reefs and rocks and bars and warning headlands from his maps, and shows a smooth coast-line with nothing but smiling shores and welcoming bays? How is he a liberal interpreter of the globe who denies the granite above and the fire beneath, and affirms that the whole is built, if we only knew it, of excellently selected wood-pulp? What possible province has liberality in the record of facts or in the interpretation of them? I understand perfectly what liberality means as toward the opinions of others who differ from us. I understand what liberality means as toward the character of others who are entirely opposed in opinion and in action to us. Coleridge’s canon has always seemed to me perfectly to cover the ground. “Tolerate no belief,” he says, “which you deem false and of injurious tendency, but arraign no belief. The man is more and other than his belief, and God only knows how large or how small a part of him the belief in man may be.” But liberality in the statement of facts—there we want exactness, we want earnestness, we want precise fidelity to the truth of things; and there is no opportunity for what calls itself liberality there. How is it less liberal to tell a man that strychnine will kill him than to tell him that it will certainly give him a pain in his stomach? [Laughter.] How is it less liberal to tell a man that if he goes over Niagara he goes to a sure death, than it is to tell him that if he takes that awful plunge he will almost certainly wet his feet. [Laughter.] No! When a man comes to me and says, “These are the liberal doctrines; there is not probably any God; we do not know where men come from; there is no law above him; there is no retribution—or if there be any, it is a small one—waiting for him,” I say, I perfectly understand your doctrines. There is no reason why I should not. There is nothing immense or complex or mysterious about them,—in fact, they are rather thin. [Laughter.] They remind one of the pillows which one of the waiters stole at a White Mountain hotel where they didn’t have very solid pillows. They knew he stole them, because they found them on him, both of them, in his waistcoat pocket. [Laughter.] We carry these doctrines very easily in our thought and hand. There is nothing massive or majestic about them; there is nothing liberal in them. If a man is true to his convictions, he is true to them; and he has no right to be liberal in the way of giving away a part of what he believes, or hiding it under any mystery of words and imposing upon men with a thought which is not really his. And when I look at the drift and working of such doctrines, I find at once that they tend to build no grand characters; they give no motive to men for repentance and faith; they do not seek, they do not tend, to lift man nearer to the level of the holiness and happiness of God on high; they work only in degradation of character; they authorize and encourage men to imitate their grandfathers, which, on that system of doctrine, is to make beasts of themselves. [Laughter.]So I turn to the system of truth, which takes God for its center, his law as our rule, his gospel as our light, his Son as our Redeemer, and his immortality as the possible and glorious home of every created being redeemed by the Son of God and renewed by his Spirit; and I say here is the gospel of the ancient time and of the present time. You need not call it antiquated. Everything which is best in the world is old. Sunshine is as old as the earth itself and the sun when the fire-mist was rounded into an orb,—the same to-day, playing on the streets of Portland, as when it played on the bowers of Paradise. The air is old, pouring its refreshing currents into our lungs and renewing our life to-day as in all time past. The great arch of the heavens is old; it has not been taken down and built up again on modern brick-work since the creation. These doctrines are old but full of motion, full of energy as the river is full of movements,—full of life-giving power, as the sunlight and the vital air. They are the doctrines out of which the missionary work sprang,—doctrines in which is all its life and the spring of its power. They are the doctrines of Paul, that first great missionary, of whom we heard in the sermon the other evening. He had strong convictions. He did not doubt. He knew whom he had believed, and was persuaded that he was able to keep him and to save the world. And who is the successor of Paul? Who holdsthe same faith with him and teaches it with the same earnest fidelity? I do not care to know especially what he believed unless I believe it myself. I do not want any uncertain or broken ice-bridge of outward ordinations between me and the Apostle; I want to have his faith in my heart and to preach it with the emphasis with which he preached it, and then I feel myself a successor of the great missionary to the Roman Empire. [Applause.]Our fathers had these convictions and because of them they gave of their wealth; they prayed, they sacrificed, they gave themselves to the work. I remember as a lad in a distant school seeing that man to whom our president refers—Champion—who went out from a great fortune to lay his bones in Western Africa in the service of his Master; and though I was a careless boy, unmindful of these things, I remember that his face shone almost as the face of Stephen when he looked up and saw the Lord on high, and the vision of it has never failed to come back to me whenever I have heard his name. They gave themselves. The motive of their missionary work was found in this Gospel of Christ. This was the instrument by which they accomplished their work in other lands. This was the instrument by which Paul wrought his mighty work in his day, and those who followed him in the Empire and in barbarous tribes, wherever they could get access to men. It is this gospel which has built New England. It is this gospel which, under the power of the Spirit of God, is to change the earth—this gospel and nothing else.Do not let us mask its doctrines in any mystery of words. Do not let us evaporate its doctrines into any thin mist of speculation. Do not let us emasculate it of its energy by taking away any of its vital forces. It seems to me that to state this gospel in novel forms and doubtful forms, in order to conciliate unbelief, is very much like the woman’s wisdom who kept the burglars out of the house by leaving all the valuables on the doorstep. [Laughter.] It seems to me that we shall have no inspiration in us, no great powerful impulse to the work, and no instrument to work with in that work, except as the old gospel of man, not a cultivated monkey but a fallen prince, of God’s law binding on him, of the light of the near eternity flashing on his spirit, of the cross of Christ and its redemptive efficacy, of the Spirit of God with his renewing power—except as this old gospel is not merely in our hands or on our lips, but is in our brains and in our hearts; and then we shall conquer. [Applause.]Men may object to it, of course—men object to everything. I remember a gentleman on the Hudson who took a querulous Englishman—not a Canadian, [laughter]—who had been finding fault with everything from the constitution of our government down to the shape of the toes of our shoes, out to see from his place the magnificent autumnal forests on the other side of the river, and the forests on the Hudson at this season of the year are as if thousands of rainbows had fallen to the earth and lodged. Said he, “Isn’t that magnificent?” “Well, yes, that is—yes, that is very fine; but don’t you think now that it is just a little tawdry, perhaps?” [Laughter.] There is nothing men may not object to in the works or in the word of God, if their hearts set them in that direction. No matter for the objection! The Gospel of Christ, instinct with power, coming from the heart, coming on the earnest word of him who believes it, goes through objections as the cannon ball goes through mists. Do not let us doubt or fear concerning its success, if we hold it as the fathers held it. Men object to the atonement; why, it has been the life of so many millions of human hearts that the multitudes on high are now uncounted and incomputable. They object to the doctrine of regeneration; that is the doctrine which more than any other exalts man’s nature, showing the royalty of it, the greatness of it, its possibilities, and the glory of its future.Of course men may object. Do not let us be disturbed; but always remember that, with the word of God within us and the power and providence of God behind us, and the spirit of God going before us to open ways for our progress, victory is sure. Christ seemed insane in his aim at the beginning. Speaking a few words orally to his disciples; writing no line unless he wrote one on the sand; only uttering his thought in syllables that seemed dissipated in the air, and aiming by that to conquer the world to his truth,—it seemed like expecting the whistle of a boy in these mountain valleys to go reverberating as thunder over all the earth in all the centuries. But he did it. It seemed insane to undertake to build a kingdom by gathering a few scattered followers here and there, and especially a small nucleus of obscure and uneducated men bound together by nothing but the simple sacrament of eating bread and drinking wine in memory of him,—without saint or standard or army or treasure or navy or counselors or forum,—it seemed like building another Lebanon with shovelfuls of sand, or building another Jerusalem with charred sticks and straws. But he did it. His kingdom already is in all the earth. The proudest empire which sets itself against it, shivers in the contact. Napoleon saw this on the Island of St. Helena. Comparing himself as a man ruling in the world with Christ as a Godlike person, said he, “He is God and not man.” He has done the work thus far; he is to do it in the future, if you and I adhere to the gospel, if from all our pulpits reverberate the echoes of this great meeting, if the force which is here assembled goes forth to testify of that system of religion of which God is the centre and head, which has its grandest trophy and symbol in the cross of Christ, and which opens the vast and near eternity to the apprehension of every soul conscious of unconfessed sins, and to the desiring and exulting hope of every soul that has found rest in Christ—the gospel that is to fill the world at last.I remember when a lad, forty years ago last spring, coming for the first time into this beautiful Portland harbor from Boston by the boat. The night was windy and rough. The cabin was confined, the boat was small; and very early in the morning I went up on deck. There was nothing but the blue waste around, dark and threatening, and the clouded heavens above. At last suddenly on the horizon flashed a light, and then after a little while another, and then a little later another still, from the light-houses along the coast; and at last the light at the entrance of this harbor became visible just as “the fingers of the dawn” were rushing up into the sky. As we swept around into the harbor the sunrise gun was fired from the cutter or corvette lying in the harbor, the band struck up a martial and inspiring air, the great splendor of the rising sun flooded the whole view, and every window-pane on these hills, as seen from the boat, seemed to be a plate of burnished gold let down from the celestial realms.Ah! my friends, we are drawing nearer to the glory of the latter day. I have thought of that vision often. I thought of it then in my early carelessness, as representing what might be conceived of the entrance into heaven. I have thought of it as I have stood by the bed of the dying and seen their faces flush and flash in a radiance that I could not apprehend. I have thought of it this week as I have been in these meetings. The lights are brightening along the coast; the darkness is disappearing; the harbor is not far off; the Sun of Righteousness is to arise in all the earth, and the golden glory of the new Jerusalem is to be established here. Let it be ours in that great day to remember that we held the faith, we triumphed by the Cross, we stood with Paul and with the Son of God, taking God’s revelation for our inspiration and doing our work under that mighty impulse.And unto God be all the praise. [Great applause.]ADVANTAGE OF WARM CLOTHING.[Concluded.]Now the clear, transparent air permits heat to be shot off, or rayed through it with great freedom. But it does not readily receive heat “by conveyance,” so long as it is still. If you put your hand into still air which is as cold as a cold metal knob, you do not know that the air is so chill as the metal, because it does not make your hand so cold. The heat is not conveyed away from your hand as quickly. When air ismoving, instead of being still, the case is, however, altogether altered. A current of air, or wind, carries away heat from warm bodies very quickly as it blows over them. It does so because each fresh little particle of air which is pressed against them, receives its own share of the heat, and conveys it away, leaving fresh particles to come up in their turn, and do the same thing. A pint of boiling water in a metal pot placed in a strong wind having fifty degrees of heat, would lose all its excess of heat as soon again as it would if standing in still air having the same warmth. The old plan of cooling hot tea or broth by blowing it, is correct in principle, though not in accordance with good taste.The laboratory of the living animal body has the supply of its fuel, and the capacity of its air-blasts, so arranged that just about as much heat is supplied through its internal furnace, as is lost from its surface by “raying off” and “conveyance,” when the surrounding air has a warmth of sixty degrees of the heat scale, and when its surface is somewhat protected by a light covering of clothing, to lessen the rapidity with which the heat is shot off and conveyed away. The heat is then produced as rapidly in the internal furnace, as it is thrown off from the outer surface, and the consequence is that the animalfeels comfortably warm. It only feels uncomfortablyhot, when more heat is produced in the furnace of the living laboratory than can be scattered through its surface. And it only feels uncomfortablycoldwhen more heat is scattered from the surface than can be kept up through the burning of the inner furnace.But in winter time the cold external air carries away heat much more quickly from the surface of living animals, than the warmer external air does in summer time. Here, then, is a little difficulty to be met, if the warmth of the body is to be kept precisely the same in both seasons. It is requisite that it should be always maintained at the same point, because that point is the one which is most suitable for the operations which are being carried on in the vessels and chambers of its laboratory. Nature has two distinct ways in which she insures this end.In the first place, are you not aware that you get more hungry in winter than you do in summer time? All living animals have pretty much the same experience as yourself in this particular, and the reason is that nature intends, during the cold season, to have more fuel introduced into the supply-pipes of the body for the warming of its structures. The furnace of the laboratory gets quickened in a small degree; its slow fires are fanned into slightly increased activity, more fuel is burned, and so more heat is generated to meet the greater demand for it, dependent on the influence of the external cold.But nature also thickens the clothing of animals during the cold season, and so affords increased obstruction, through which the escaping heat has to force its way. Have you not observed the sleek silky coat which the horse wears through the summer, and then noticed at the beginning of winter how this sleek coat is exchanged for a thick, fuzzy shag, that looks more like wool than hair? The warm winter coat economizes the heat produced in the furnace of the living body, and keeps it from being scattered to waste as quickly as it is through the sleek summer coat. This is nature’s other plan of meeting the difficulty brought about by the changing temperature of the air. Nearly all animals belonging to temperate and cold climates have this change of apparel provided for them in spring and autumn, but in some cases the change is rendered very striking in consequence of a summer garment of bright gay colors being replaced by a winter one of pure and spotless white. The fierce tyrant of the ice land himself, the polar bear, has a dingy yellow coat during the summer, but puts on furs as snowy as his own realms when once the summer sun has disappeared. These white winter furs are always warmer than dark ones. Birds which do not migrate to warmer regions of the earth in the cold season, have winter and summer suits of apparel, just in the same way as quadrupeds. In the winter a lining of the thick, soft white down is added beneath the outer feathers. There is one little bird which comes to England in the late autumn, driven there by the still greater cold further north, and which is familiarly known as having two remarkably different costumes for his English and his foreign residence. In England the snow-bunting appears with a white body and tail, but abroad and in summer time he is distinguished by a brilliant black tail and back, and a body and head of pure white.Man follows the example which nature has set before him, in the matter of clothing. He prepares himself stout warm garments for winter time, and thin cool ones for the summer; and not only this; in the hottest regions of the earth, where there is most sunshine, he commonly goes nearly naked, while in the coldest regions, near the poles, he puts on the heaviest and warmest woolens and furs that he can procure. Now this is one reason why man has beenapparentlyso uncared for by nature in the particular of clothing. The seeming indifference and carelessness is really consideration of the highest kind. All the different races of the lower animals have their own narrow tracts assigned them for their residence. In these tracts there is no very extreme diversity of temperature, and provision is therefore easily made to adapt their clothing to it just so far as is required. The human race, on the other hand, is intended to cover the entire earth, and to subdue it; to spread itself from the burning tropics to the frigid poles. The heat which has to be borne in the tropics, is as much greater than that which is experienced near the poles in winter time, as boiling water is hotter than ice. At the poles, one hundred degrees of frost often occur. In India, there are occasionally one hundred and thirty degrees of heat under the canvas of tents. It therefore becomes an affair of almost absolute necessity, that the skin of the widely scattered lords of creation should be as unencumbered as possible, and that warm clothing should have to be prepared and added as a covering whenever circumstances call for its use. The head only, of the human being, has a natural fur garment. This part of the body is covered with hair, because the most delicate portion of the entire frame, the brain, is contained within it. The skull is protected by hair, that the brain may not be hurt by too sudden a change from cold to heat, or from heat to cold.There is another advantage attending upon the arrangement which has left human beings dependent upon an artificial supply of clothing, and which has ordained that they shall come into the world with naked skins. In consequence of this arrangement it is very easy to secure that amount of cleanliness which is necessary for the preservation of the health of such delicately framed creatures. The artificial clothes can be altogether changed at will, and they can be washed and aired, as they never could be if they were inseparably attached to the skin. Then, too, they can be removed from the skin in the early morning, or at convenient intervals, and its surface can be thoroughlycleansed and purified by bathing with water. Just think of the difference of going into a bath of refreshing water unencumbered by clothes, and of doing the same with thick, dabby garments clinging about you, and having to shake yourselves like great Newfoundland dogs when you come out; and also recall to mind the pleasure you experience every time you change soiled linen for clean, and you will become sensible of how much you owe to beneficent nature for having left you destitute of the feathers of the bird, or the fur of the bear. The extreme importance of making a fair use of this privilege has been already alluded to in its proper place.But nature has effected yet another very bountiful provision for the comfort and safety of her tender charge, the living human animal. Even when only covered by very light clothing, it is possible human beings may be placed in air which is so warm, that heat is not carried off from their bodies so fast as it is produced in the interior furnace. In India, it sometimes happens that the air gets to be even hotter than the living body. All movement of the air, then, heats, rather than cools. Under such circumstances, nature adopts a very effectual course to prevent warmth from collecting more and more in the frame, until a disagreeable and injurious amount has been reached. Having first reduced the supply of fuel to the smallest limits consistent with keeping the fire going, by lessening the appetite, and by taking away the craving for heating food, and having given a hint to adopt such outer coverings for the body as are as little obstructive of the passage of heat as possible, the heat drenches the surface of the frame abundantly with moisture, which has the power to cool by its ready evaporation. Take a small piece of wet linen and lay it upon your forehead, or upon your arm, leaving it freely exposed to the air, and you will find, that as the moisture evaporates from the linen, your skin underneath will feel colder and colder. The heat of the skin is used up in converting the moisture of the linen into steam, exactly as the heat of a fire is used up in converting the water of a kettle into steam when this is made to boil. The steam flies away with the warmth of the skin very rapidly, and consequently the skin soon comes to feel cold. Now, when the body gets to be very warm, and the over-heated blood is rapidly pouring through the channels of its supply pipes, then the three millions of little holes or pores, which lie upon its surface, are opened, and floods of vapor and water are poured through them, producing just the same kind of effect as wet linen would do. This action is termed “perspiration,” or a “steaming through” the pores of the skin. The breathing blows up, or fans the slow furnace contained within the living animal frame, and so heats it above the surrounding air. The perspiration carries away portions of this heat when it has been raised too high, and so cools the heated body down. Some moisture also escapes as steam from the lungs and through the mouth in breathing, thus assisting the perspiring skin in its office of diminishing the excessive warmth of the body. You have often seen dogs, which have been heated by running, pant with opened mouths and outstretched tongues, the vapor steaming forth from their gaping throats. Dogs cool themselves in this way because they have very little perspiration passing through their skins. Their perspiration is really from their throats, rather than from their skins. Human beings sometimes lose, in hot weather, as much as five pints of water in twenty-four hours, by exhalation through the lungs and skin.Give me now, good reader, your close attention for just a few minutes while I return to the notion with which we started on beginning the consideration of this subject, so that I may fit it into its right place, and leave it well packed away with the other notions that we have gained, while studying the value and uses of air, water, and food. Your body is a living laboratory, formed of an enormous quantity of little chambers and vessels. From a strong central force-pump, placed in the middle of that laboratory, liquefied food, or blood, is streamed out through branching supply-pipes to the several chambers, to carry to them the materials that have to be operated upon in their cavities for the production of animal power and warmth. The force-pump acts by repeated short strokes, but the liquefied food flows through chambers of the laboratory in continuous, even currents, because the supply-pipes are made of yielding and elastic substance, like India-rubber, and not of hard, stiff substance, like metal or wood. As the liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump, the elastic walls of the supply-pipes are stretched by the gush, but directly afterwards they shrink back again, as India-rubber would do, shut close a valve that prevents all return of the liquid into the force-pump, and so compel the liquid to run onwards in the other direction, through the pipes. Before the shrinking in of the pipes has altogether ended, the force-pump renews its stroke, and so the onward flow of the liquid never stays, although the pump has to make beat after beat. The liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump with a speed of about a foot in each second; but it has to supply such an enormous host of small chambers in the remote parts of the laboratory, that it does not flow through them with a speed greater than an inch in a minute. This, however, is no disadvantage, as it affords plenty of time for the full carrying out of all the intended changes in those chambers, whereby animal power and warmth are to be produced.Remember, then, that as your heart beats in your chest, second after second, the red blood flushes through every crevice and every fibre of your living frame, just as it does through your cheek when it is crimsoned with a blush. Seventy or eighty times every minute, your beating heart pumps, and constantly, so long as you are alive, the flushing blood streams on everywhere. The blood, however, streams on in this continuous way, because its flow is not stopped, even when it has reached the remotest chambers and fibers. The trunks of the supply-pipes divide into branching twigs, which get very fine indeed where they are in connection with the working chambers of the laboratory, and which then lead on into return-pipes, that are gathered together into enlarging trunks, These, in their turn, are collected into main tubes which end in the cavity of the heart. At the extremity of these main trunks of the return-pipes, valves are so placed as to prevent the pumping action of the heart from forcing the blood back into them. Thus, as your heart pumps, swelling out and drawing in its walls, the blood flows into its cavity by the return-pipes, and is squeezed out therefrom through the supply-pipes. It always streams in one direction. It circulates through the living frame which it flushes; that is, it goes in an endless circle, now through the heart, now through the supply-pipes, now through the return-pipes, and now starts once again through the heart.But as your blood thus circulates, through your living frame, fresh nourishment, newly dissolved food, is added in some places to its streams; in other places nourishment and fuel are taken from it to furnish the active chambers of the laboratory with warmth and power; in other places worn-out substance is added to it to be carried away in its current; and at other places this worn-out substance is poured away from it through the outlets provided for its removal. The principal outlets through which the waste of your living laboratory is poured away, have been already spoken of in detail—they are the pores of the skin, the drains of the laboratory; and the pores of the lungs, that with the mouth form the chimney of the laboratory throughwhich the smoke and the vapors from the burned fuel fly away. In addition to these outlets, there is, however, another series by which some denser matters, which can not be got through either the skin-pores or the lungs, are streamed away. This series is continually in operation, but the details of its arrangements are so ingeniously planned, that it accommodates its work to the demand of each passing instant. When, for instance, the perspiring pores of the skin are widely open for the cooling of the frame, and an increased amount of liquid is consequently steamed away through them, then these outlets are narrowed; but when, on the other hand, the skin-pores are closed, or when any extra flood of liquid is thrown into the interior of the frame during cold weather, then the additional outlets at once are brought into very active play.Now, just imagine the case of a large town, in which there is a certain quantity of waste liquid needing to be carried away through drain-pipes every day, but in which also there occur occasional excessive floods of rain, which must have a way of escape provided for them whenever they happen. How clever you would think it if some skillful engineer fixed valves in the drain-pipes of that town, which kept themselves fast closed under ordinary circumstances, but which opened of their own accord whenever the pressure of an extra flood came, and so allowed the excess of liquid to flow safely and freely away. Such has really been the proceeding of the skillful Engineer of your living frame. Your body is exposed to the risk of occasional excessive floods. When the weather is very cold, for instance, the pores of your skin are closed, and not more than a single pint of liquid can force its way out through them, in the place of the four pints which would pass in warm weather. Much of the water which would otherwise have escaped from the channels of the supply-pipes, then remains in them, coursing round in the progress of the circulation. Sometimes, too, in all probability you will be tempted to swallow an unreasonable quantity of liquid, beyond any demand the mere process of cooling an over-heated frame can require. But whenever you have thus set up an unusual internal flood, sluice-gates are opened, and through these the excess is rapidly poured until the flood is got rid of. In those parts of your body which have been named the kidneys, there are pores through which waste liquid is always draining, without being turned into vapor or steam; but in the kidneys there are also chambers composed of very fine walls, which are strong enough to prevent fluid from passing through them when it is only pressed by a gentle force, but which are not strong enough to do so when the pressure becomes greater in consequence of the over-flooding of the supply-pipes. The kidneys are the sluice-gates of your body, provided with outlets for common use, and with self-acting valves which come into operation upon occasions of excessive flood.Thus astonishing, then, is the care which has been taken in perfecting the arrangements of the heating service of that complicated laboratory, your living body. Fuel is thrown into an internal furnace, more or less plentifully, according to need. The fuel is there burned, and fanned by air-blasts, which are strengthened or weakened as the occasion may require. The heat produced by the burning is economized by external packings and wrappings, or it is scattered by the opening of evaporating pores on the external surface, and by the drenching of that surface with steaming moisture; and self-acting valves are provided to regulate the quantity of liquid contained in the supply-pipes, so that the cooling pores may never be forced into mischievous activity by the mere pressure of excess in their channels, at a time when the body is already sufficiently chill.When cold is suddenly applied to the previously warm skin of the living body, it shuts up all the perspiring pores at once, and then empties its supply-pipes of their streaming blood inwards. You know how pale and numb your skin becomes on a cold frosty day, when you stand quietly in the chilling air. That is because the cold squeezes all the blood out of the small vessels of your skin. But where do you suppose the squeezed-out blood goes to? It flows directly into the several internal parts, choking up and overloading their channels. If the skin be soon made warm again, the overloaded parts of the inside once more get emptied, and recover their usual freedom; but if it be kept cold, then their overloading and choking continues, and great discomfort is experienced. All kinds of inflammations and disorders are produced in this way. What are commonly known as colds are internal obstructions of this nature. Cold in the head is an affection in which the lining of the nostrils is overcharged with stagnating blood. Sore throat is caused by a similar condition in the lining of the throat. And cough by the same state in the lining of the vessels and cavities of the chest.The mere application of a chill temperature to the skin is not alone, however, enough to give a cold. This result chiefly comes when the application has been made while the body is in a weakened or exhausted state, and therefore has not the power to resist and overcome the internal disturbance of the even blood-flow. Colds are nearly always caught in consequence of a sudden exposure of the body to a chill, either when it is in a state of exhaustion and fatigue from sustained exertion, or when it has been for some time previously over-heated. Excess of heat itself soon produces exhaustion, and depression of the strength and the powers of life. When a chill is applied to the skin while the body is fresh and strong, as, for instance, when a man pours cold water over himself the instant he gets out of a warm bed in the morning, after a sound and refreshing sleep, it does no harm, for this reason: First, the blood is driven away from the supply-pipes of the skin by the cold, and flows inwards; but the refreshed heart, then becoming sensible of its arrival, rouses itself to increased effort, and prevents obstruction by pumping on the liquid more vigorously. By this means blood is soon sent back again to the skin in great abundance, and makes it glow with renewed warmth. It is only when the cold is very severe, or very long continued, that this re-action, as it is called, would be hindered, and internal disorder be likely to be set up.Here, then, is one of the advantages of employing warm clothing. It prevents the catching of cold by protecting the skin from sudden chills at a time when the internal parts of the frame are depressed and unable to meet, without injury, the effects which follow upon it. If at any time you are very weary, and very warm, remember, then, that you must keep yourself warm by drawing more clothes round you, or by some other plan. Want of attention to this very simple proceeding, or absolute ignorance that it ought to be adopted, is among the common means whereby men lay up for themselves disease and suffering, and cause sickness to take the place of health.How constantly it happens, at the very first appearance of fine weather in spring, that sore throats and coughs and colds are met with everywhere. This is nearly always because people are then tempted to throw aside the warm clothing which they have used through the winter, and so to leave their skins very much more exposed to the influences of the sudden chills, which are quite sure to occur at this time. Just observe what nature herself does in this matter. She does not take off the horse’s warm coat the moment the spring sunshine bursts out in the sky. She compels him to keep it upon his back, at the risk of his being a good deal encumbered by it now and then, because it is better he should submit to this small inconvenience for atime, rather than be exposed to the danger of a grave disease. As you may advantageously take a lesson from the bee as to the management of fresh air in your dwellings, so you may advantageously go to the quadruped to learn how to manage the alteration of your clothing at the change of the seasons. When you see the horse putting on his fine silken garment for summer, follow his example; but until you do see this, be wise, and still keep within the protection of your winter wools and furs.There is another plan by which people every day expose themselves to the danger of catching cold, and of so falling into disease. They commonly sit in very draughty rooms; apartments which are warmed by bright fires, but which are at the same time chilled by cold wind rushing in at large crannies and crevices, far beyond the quantity which is needed for the mere supply of pure air. Such rooms are warm and cold climates brought together in a nutshell. There is a scorching summer near the fire, and a freezing winter near the window at the same instant. Merely walking about the room therefore takes the body in a moment from one climate to another, and this must happen sometimes when the body is not prepared to meet, and accommodate itself to, the change. A chilled surface, and internal obstructions result, and colds and diseases follow very soon. The inside of rooms should be in winter time very much what they are in the summer season; that is, not too hot, but equally warm in all parts, and with a sufficient current of air passing through them to keep them pure, although not with enough to set up dangerous draughts. If there are draughts, then the protection of warm clothing must be constantly employed, to prevent the chilling influence from attacking the skin. Warm and undraughty dwelling-rooms are the natural allies of warm clothes in health-preserving power.There is another very excellent companion and helper of warm clothes in this good work. This helper is “exercise.” If, when you are weary and warm, and have no additional clothes to draw round you on the instant to prevent a chill, you sit down or stand still in the cold wind, you will be nearly sure to catch cold, and to be made ill. But if, on the other hand, you keep moving about until you can either clothe yourself more warmly, or go into a warm room, then you will be almost as certain to escape without harm. Exercise aids the heart in keeping the blood moving briskly, and if at any time there is an inclination for the blood-flow to stagnate and get obstructed internally, then exercise overcomes the obstruction, and sends the lagging blood cheerily on toward all parts of the frame, and back toward the skin. Brisk exercise thus possesses the power to overcome mischief, as well as to prevent it. Its influence in quickening and sustaining the flow of the blood-streams through the supply-pipes of the body, necessarily leads in the end to the strengthening of every structure in the frame, and to the rousing of every operation that is carried on in the living laboratory. Every one who values the blessing of health and strength will do well, if his daily task is not one of exertion in the open air, to make such a task for himself. One hour at least out of the twenty-four should be spent in quickening the blood-streams, and in deepening the breathing by walking briskly in some open space where the fresh winds of heaven have free play.But we will now imagine that in ignorance of all these particulars, or in consequence of some long-continued exertion and exposure which the demands of duty made it altogether impossible for you to avoid, you have caught a cold, and are beginning to suffer from a sore throat, or a cough, or some other sign that matters within are not as they should be. What, under such circumstances, ought you to do to stop the cold, and get rid of it, before serious disorder is brought about? Here, again, warm clothing is of the highest value. If the chilled surface be at once closely covered up, and be kept covered, the blood is soon drawn back to the skin, and the internal obstructions are in this way overcome. The best possible way to get rid of a cold quickly, for those who can follow it, is to go to bed as soon as it begins, and to keep there until the cold is cured. If you can not follow this plan, thendrink as little of any fluid as you canfor four or five days, and there will soon be not enough blood, as regards quantity, in your body, to keep internal parts overcharged, and they will be relieved, and you will get well. There is this evil in the first plan of curing a cold: people who have lain in bed for some time, come out of it with the pores of their skins more than usually opened, and more than usually disposed to suffer from any fresh chill. People who pursue the second plan may be exposed in any way without meeting this risk.There are thus, then, golden rules for the management of the clothing, as well as for the management of the feeding, which all people should have stamped on their understandings, and engraved upon their memories. These are:Follow the example which nature sets, and wear thicker clothing in cold weather than in warm.Do not lay aside the warm clothing of winter, as soon as fine, mild weather seems to have begun, but wait until you see that nature is taking their winter garments away from the birds and the beasts.Never expose yourself to a chill without extra clothing, when you are weary, as well as warm.Never sit in draughts of cold air without putting on extra clothing.Keep in brisk exercise when you are unable to avoid currents of chill air, and are at the same time fatigued by exertion, and thinly clad.Never remain in damp clothes longer than you can help. Damp clothes chill the surface of the body very rapidly by carrying away its heat as the moisture is turned into steam. Wet stockings, and boots, or shoes, are injurious, for the same reason as other kinds of wet clothing. They are not more dangerous than other kinds of damp garments, but they have to be encountered much more frequently on account of the ground often remaining wet for long periods, when there is no great excess of moisture in the air. Wet feet produce harm more frequently than wet clothes, because they are much more common.By a careful and constant attendance to the principles laid down in these golden rules, the attacks of many grave diseases may be avoided, and the advantage which is intended to result from the influence of warm clothes may be most certainly secured.
Bythe Author of “John Halifax, Gentleman.”
Gray heavens, gray earth, gray sea, gray sky,Yet rifted with strange gleams of gold,Downward, all’s dark; but up on highWalk our white angels,—dear of old.Strong faith in God and trust in man,In patience we possess our souls;Eastward, grey ghosts may linger wan,But westward, back the shadow rolls.Life’s broken urns with moss are clad,And grass springs greenest over graves;The shipwrecked sailor reckons glad,Not what he lost, but what he saves.Our sun has set, but in his rayThe hill-tops shine like saints new-born:His after-glow of night makes day,And when we wake it will be morn.
Gray heavens, gray earth, gray sea, gray sky,Yet rifted with strange gleams of gold,Downward, all’s dark; but up on highWalk our white angels,—dear of old.Strong faith in God and trust in man,In patience we possess our souls;Eastward, grey ghosts may linger wan,But westward, back the shadow rolls.Life’s broken urns with moss are clad,And grass springs greenest over graves;The shipwrecked sailor reckons glad,Not what he lost, but what he saves.Our sun has set, but in his rayThe hill-tops shine like saints new-born:His after-glow of night makes day,And when we wake it will be morn.
Gray heavens, gray earth, gray sea, gray sky,Yet rifted with strange gleams of gold,Downward, all’s dark; but up on highWalk our white angels,—dear of old.
Gray heavens, gray earth, gray sea, gray sky,
Yet rifted with strange gleams of gold,
Downward, all’s dark; but up on high
Walk our white angels,—dear of old.
Strong faith in God and trust in man,In patience we possess our souls;Eastward, grey ghosts may linger wan,But westward, back the shadow rolls.
Strong faith in God and trust in man,
In patience we possess our souls;
Eastward, grey ghosts may linger wan,
But westward, back the shadow rolls.
Life’s broken urns with moss are clad,And grass springs greenest over graves;The shipwrecked sailor reckons glad,Not what he lost, but what he saves.
Life’s broken urns with moss are clad,
And grass springs greenest over graves;
The shipwrecked sailor reckons glad,
Not what he lost, but what he saves.
Our sun has set, but in his rayThe hill-tops shine like saints new-born:His after-glow of night makes day,And when we wake it will be morn.
Our sun has set, but in his ray
The hill-tops shine like saints new-born:
His after-glow of night makes day,
And when we wake it will be morn.
ByRev.SHELDON JACKSON, D.D.
New Mexico is Spain in the United States—a region where the Spanish language, customs, and habits prevail, where the debates of the legislature and the pleadings of the courts are in a foreign tongue; a territory where an American feels as one in a foreign country, and is a stranger in his own land.
While the latest section to receive American civilization, it was the first to be occupied by Europeans. When our pilgrim fathers were shivering through their first New England winter, New Mexico had been settled half a century. When they were making
“The sounding aisles of the dim woods ringTo the anthem of the free,”
“The sounding aisles of the dim woods ringTo the anthem of the free,”
“The sounding aisles of the dim woods ringTo the anthem of the free,”
“The sounding aisles of the dim woods ring
To the anthem of the free,”
the Spanish cavalier was chanting the “Te Deum” in churches even then beginning to be venerable with age. And there to-day are the descendants of those brave old Castilians whose prowess made illustrious the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
In 1677 a book was published in London giving an account “of America and all the principal kingdoms, provinces, seas, and islands of it.” Mr. Heylin, the author, thus speaks of New Mexico in volume IV: “Nova Mexicana is bounded on the south with New Biscay; on the west with Quivara; the countreyes, on the north and east, not discovered hitherto, though some extend eastward as far as Florida, extended two hundred and fifty leagues from the town and mines of Santa Barbara, and how much beyond that none can tell; the relations of this country being so uncertain and incredulous that I dare say nothing positively of the soil or people, but much less of the towns and cities which are said to be in it.”
New Mexico, as at present constituted, has an area of 121,201 square miles, and in a general way may be said to consist of tablelands, mountains, and valleys. The tablelands rise one above another in well-defined terraces, with an altitude above sea level of from 5,000 feet in the southeast, to 7,500 feet in the northwest. These tablelands cover about two-thirds of the Territory, and constitute the valuable grazing lands. The mountainous region consists of the Rocky Mountains, which enter the Territory from the north in two chains—like the prongs of a fork. The eastern chain terminates a few miles south of Sante Fe, while the western one ends in the broken and detached ranges of the southern section of the Territory. These mountains are rich in gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and coal. Sections of them are covered with valuable timber, and among them are many medicinal springs. The valleys lie between these mountain ranges, and contain the agricultural lands, and are farmed by artificial irrigation. These valleys produce good crops of corn, wheat, beans, etc., and in the southern half of the Territory raise fine apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, and grapes, the grapes up to the present time being more abundant than other fruits. In addition to the above, the Messilla (Ma-see´-ya) valley produces quinces, figs, and pomegranates. Artificial irrigation is supplied from the melting snows of the mountains. The principal streams are the Rio Grande (Ree´-o Gran-da), the Canadian, the Pecos (Pa-cos), the San Juan (San Whan), and the Gila (Hee-la).
The Rio Grande River is the Nile of America. It is 1,800 miles long and of almost equal volume from its source to its mouth, flowing hundreds of miles without receiving a tributary of any size, being fed almost entirely from the snows of the mountains. Along on either side of the river are canals conveying the water to the adjacent farms. The water is exceedingly roily and its annual deposit of sediment upon the land increases its fertility.
The climate is unexcelled by any portion of the United States—being a succession of bright sunshiny days almost the year through. The country is free from malarial, billious and lung troubles, general debility and asthma.
New Mexico has much of antiquarian interest. The mysteries connected with its earlier history and the evidences of former greatness throw a halo of romance around it. The country when first visited in 1536, or ’37, by Spaniards was filled with the ruins of great cities, which ruins are still in existence. In some places, acres of ground are still covered with pieces of broken pottery. The mountains, in sections, are honeycombed with abandoned dwellings, like Petra of old, or with the remains of ancient mining operations, from which were drawn those vast supplies of gold and silver found at Montezuma’s court.
In the Cañon de Chilly (de-shay) high up in the face of perpendicular walls of rock are hundreds of ruins now tenantless and desolate. Among some of these ruins which we have visited are sepulchres, about four feet square, of mortar-laid stone, in which we found human skeletons.
In the Cañon de Chaco are great buildings with three and four stories of walls still standing, built in the most substantial manner of cut stone and neatly plastered on the inside. The country in the immediate vicinity of these ruins is wild and desolate, and no clew to the builders has yet been found. We only know that years, possibly ages ago, great cities grew, flourished and passed away, leaving extensive ruins as the evidence of their existence.
At the close of the sixteenth century the Spaniards took possession of the country, subjugated the native races and made them slaves to work the newly-opened mines. The Spanish rule was so cruel that in 1680 the Pueblos rebelled and drove them from the country. Then commenced a war, lasting many years, making the valley of the Rio Grande classic ground, as the Spanish forces again and again advanced up the valley, only to be driven back by the Pueblos, until, through treachery and dissensions among the native forces, the Spanish were again in full control.
New Mexico became known to Americans first through the explorations of Captains Long, Nicollet, and Fremont. La Londe, a Frenchman, was sent by Morrison, of Kaskaskia, Illinois, on a trading trip in 1804. He was followed by James Pursley in 1805. Pike visited there in 1807, and a train of goods was sent in 1812 by Knight, Beard, Chambers, and eight others. This party were seized by the authorities and held as prisoners for nine years. Caravans of traders were furnished with a government escort in 1829, 1834, and 1843.
In 1848 New Mexico was annexed to the United States.
The majority of the people reside in villages. These are largely of the same pattern, and consist of a large public square, around which are grouped without much attention to regular streets, a number of one-story adobe (sun-dried) brick houses. The individual houses are built around the four sides of smaller squares calledplacitas. The rooms of the house open on thisplacita; also the stable. The buildings are usually one story high, with dirt floors and flat dirt roofs. During the rainy season the roofs leak badly. Among the older houses there are but few that have glass windows. A few others have mica windows. The larger number have an open lattice work, protected in stormy weather by a tight board shutter. The roof is made of poles, covered first with grass, then two feet of dirt, and is used for various family purposes. (2 Kings 19: 26; Acts 10: 9.) The floor is the native earth, beaten hard, then covered with a layer of adobe clay. The fire-place is in a corner, and on three sides of the room a raised bench of clay forms a seat, and also a shelf for piling away the bed blankets during the day. Many ofthe houses, especially of the poorer classes, are without chair, bedstead, or table. Many of the rooms are neatly whitewashed with a white clay found in that region, and the walls hung with crucifixes, mirrors, and lithograph pictures of saints. There is one large opening, or gate, into theplacita, admitting alike the family, donkeys, goats and sheep. The streets are narrow, irregular, and without sidewalks. The roads, worn by the travel of centuries, are lower than the adjacent country, and during a rainy season filled with muddy water. Wagons are scarce, as also are the native carts, some of them with a primitive wheel, constructed from a solid section of a tree.
The Mexican’s chief friend is the donkey, and in the streets of the villages are to be seen droves of them loaded with hay, fire-wood, vegetables, crates of fruit, melons, merchandise, casks of whisky, trunks, lumber, etc. It is no uncommon thing to see a drove, each with a heavy stick of timber projecting into the air beyond his head, and the other end dragging on the ground behind him.
In the fields are occasional lodges (Isaiah 1: 8) as a shelter while watching the vineyard, melon or grain fields.
Roads for foot-passengers and pack-animals run through the grain and corn fields (Mark 2: 23; Matthew 13: 4) and along the unfenced wayside were the graves of the former inhabitants, or the points where the pall-bearers rested in bearing the body to the grave, marked with a rude board cross and pile of stones (Joshua 7: 26; 2 Samuel 18: 17). The women carry water in great jars on their heads or shoulders (Gen. 24: 46).
They plow like the ancients with a crooked stick fastened to the horns of the oxen—several yoke of oxen following one another (1 Kings 19: 19).
As in the days of Ruth and Boaz, men and women still reap with a sickle and the poor get the gleanings (Ruth 2: 15-23). The grain when reaped is spread out on threshing floors made smooth by packing the earth (Gen. 50: 10; 1 Sam. 23: 1) where it is threshed out by driving around in a circle sheep, horses or oxen (Deut. 25: 4). After cleaning out the bulk of the straw with forks, the wheat and chaff are shoveled into blankets, which by a series of jerks, similar to shaking carpets, toss their contents into the air, the chaff blowing one side and the wheat falling back in the blanket. This process can only be carried on when the wind is favorable; consequently to improve a favorable wind they work all night (Ruth 3: 2). Another process is to lift the wheat and chaff in a bucket as high as the head and empty it slowly upon a blanket spread on the ground. Separated from the chaff, the wheat is taken to a neighboring stream and washed in large earthen jars, after which it is spread upon woolen blankets to dry in the sun.
The principal diet of the people ischile colorado(col-o-row). There are several varieties of this fiery dish; one made of beef is calledcarne. A more common dish is made of mutton and calledcarnero. The flesh is boiled to a pulp, to which is addedchile.Chileis prepared by rolling red pepper on a stone until pods and seeds are a soft mass. It tastes as red-hot iron is supposed to taste. It is said that a new beginner on this diet ought to have a copper-lined throat.
Many old churches are still in use. They are built of adobe brick, with dirt roof and dirt floor. Some of them possess paintings evidently imported from Spain. There are also many ruder home-made paintings on the walls. They are without seats or pews, the worshippers kneeling or sitting on the floor. They are also generally much out of repair. They contain many images, and in some of the churches a bier with a life-size image of the Savior. At certain festivals this is carried in a procession, and on Good Friday is used to dramatize the crucifixion of Christ. In some of the churches are exhibitions of Scriptural scenes covering the life of the Savior, apostles and early martyrs. Occasionally an image of Christ is rigged with a movable arm, which is turned by a crank. As with the movement of the crank the hand comes up, it is supposed to throw blessings upon the waiting congregation below. Upon one occasion during a long dry spell, they carried an image of the Virgin Mary in stately processions through the fields to secure rain. But the drouth continuing, the people in anger took the image out into the street, took off its costly clothing, and gave it a public whipping. Just then a severe thunder and hail storm came up; vivid flashes of lightning played around them, and the hail destroyed their crops and gardens. Greatly frightened, the ignorant people hastened to re-clothe the image, and prostrate themselves before it in most abject submission. The enclosure in front of these churches, and especially the floor of the church itself, is the favorite burial-place of the people, the holiest place of all being near the altar. Nearness to the altar is graded by the amount of money paid.
The Roman Catholic Church, removed from competition with Protestantism, is a wisely constructed machine for extorting money out of the fears and superstitions of an ignorant people. Baptism, confession, blessings, anointing, burials, and mass must all be paid for at a round price. The weeping friends bring the corpse of the loved one and set down the bier before the closed gates of the church. Then money is laid upon the corpse. Again and again has a priest been known to look out, and if he judged that the money was not as much as the friends could afford to pay, refuse to open the gate, and nothing is left for the friends but to continue adding money to the sum previously collected until the rapacity of the priest is satisfied. An ordinary funeral in a churchyard will cost one hundred dollars, if the family has that much. To be buried in some of the churches costs from five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars, according to position. The corpse is carried on a board or bier (they do not generally use coffins), to the place of burial. If the priest goes to the house, he walks in front of the funeral procession. He has on a scarlet dress with a white over-skirt. At his side is a small boy similarly dressed, tinkling a bell. A few yards in the rear is a second priest, dressed in scarlet and white, swinging a burning censer. Around him is grouped a motley crowd of men, women, and children, carrying lighted candles, the men and boys with uncovered heads, and behind all are men firing muskets into the air to frighten away the devil, who is supposed to be hovering around, waiting a chance to seize the spirit of the departed one. If the corpse is that of a child, it is covered with flowers (the corpse of such is called an angel). From two to four children walk with the bearers. Behind these are other children, who are considered more holy than the rabble that follow. These are followed by four children carrying a richly dressed saint under a canopy. If the family are able to pay for it, the priest comes out to meet the procession, and sprinkles holy water over the corpse, then into the grave. After this the corpse is slid off the board into the grave with but little ceremony, and some dirt thrown upon it. Men then get into the grave with a heavy maul and pack the dirt down solid; then more dirt is thrown in and packed down. This is continued until the grave is filled up level with the rest of the floor of the church. The corpses are placed three or four deep in the same spot, and oftentimes the bones of previous burials are thrown up to make room for the new comer. In one instance that came to light, the spade clave in two the head of a child and threw it out. Nearly all the old churches I have visited smell like a charnel house. A few years ago the legislature of New Mexico forbid further burials in the churches.
With the advent of railways, miners and Americans, thepeculiar and old-time customs of the country will speedily disappear, and a new era dawn upon the people. Great changes are rapidly taking place, and New Mexico is waking up from the sleep of centuries.
January 1, 1881, there were 658 miles of railway in operation, which has been greatly increased since. During 1880 the yield of the mines was $711,300. At the same time there were 400,000 head of cattle and 5,000,000 sheep on its pasture lands. Population, 118,430. The census of 1880 gives 38 Roman Catholic, 7 Presbyterian, and 1 Baptist churches; and not mentioned in the census report, the writer knows of several Methodist and Episcopalian churches.
In 1849, Rev. Henry W. Reed, a Baptist minister, opened a school at Santa Fe.
In 1850 Rev. E. G. Nicholson commenced a Methodist mission at Santa Fe, which was abandoned two years after.
In 1857 Rev. W. J. Kephart, a Presbyterian minister, was sent to New Mexico in the anti-slavery interests, and became editor of the Santa FeGazette. In 1852 Rev. Samuel Gorman, a Baptist minister, entered the Territory and commenced a mission at Laguna Pueblo.
These missions were all abandoned at the beginning of the rebellion.
In 1866 Protestant missions were resumed by Rev. D. F. McFarland, a Presbyterian minister sent to Santa Fe.
In 1869 the writer of this article was appointed Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions for New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. The present Presbyterian strength is eighteen ministers, of whom six are Mexicans.
By theRev.R. S. STORRS, D. D.
There are two schemes of religious thought generically in the world, as there has been—and are now to some extent—two systems of astronomical speculation, one obtaining in uncivilized countries, and the other in civilized. One system of astronomical speculation takes the earth as the center around which the heavens revolve. That seems according to our senses; that is the architecture of the heavens according to the natural man. When the Rev. Mr. Jasper, at Richmond, insists that “the sun do move,” he seems to have the judgment and the sense of every seeing man with him. [Laughter.] And we know what comes of it,—uninterpreted and unintelligible and contradictory motions in all the sky; a baffled heaven scribbled o’er with cycle and epicycle. The other system of astronomical speculation takes its start from the sun as the center and the governor of the planetary system, and finds that sun himself, with all his dependent orbs, marching onward through the heavens. And we know what comes of that. (There came a book from Dr. Hill, years ago, which I read with the intensest interest, concerning the relation of the stars.) [Applause.] There comes order and harmony in all the system of the heavens. We measure and weigh the planet in its course. The astronomer catches the comet in its far flight, measures its motion and predicts its course and its return. The butterfly floating in the air is balanced against the sun. Every shell on the beach, every bud on the tree, is brought into relation with the farthest nebula whose lace-work stains the distant azure. It is the astronomy of science; it is the astronomy of advanced and cultivated thought.
There are two systems of religious speculation. The one takes man as its center and starting-point, regarding him as a finished fact, practically. In its grosser forms it does not profess to know, as we have been told by the brother who preceded me, whence he came; but it suspects that his nature is evolved out of the brutal. It does not know whither he is going; but it treats the future as the scoffing French sceptic treated it, as at best “a grand Perhaps.” It does not know about God, or whether there be any God other than the sum of universal forces. It has no moral law except a general average of probable experiences. And so it comes to men and tells them to go on and live as they list. It tells them that there is no fear of retribution, no need of atonement, and it has no place in all its compass for any doctrine of regeneration and of the Holy Spirit of God. I do not mean, of course, that everybody who holds this system will accept fully my statement of it. In fact it is sometimes hard to find out exactly how they state it, or what they mean by their statements themselves. I am reminded occasionally of the man who had a clock which somebody criticised, saying, “Your clock, Mr. Jones, does not keep good time.” “Why,” said he, “it does keep perfectly good time, only you do not understand it. The fact is that when the hands on that clock point to twelve, then it strikes three, and what that means is that it wants twenty minutes to seven. [Laughter and applause.] Now if you will keep that in mind, you will hit the right time in every instance.” [Laughter.] Well, I intend to speak very seriously, and yet I cannot help being reminded by some of the language which is made use of in some of these what-we-call agnostic publications, into which the richest Christian words are sometimes brought as if to give a kind of artificial and fictitious consecration to the doctrine which I think a detestable doctrine underneath,—I can not help being reminded of a very careful paraphrase which was made by a very bright and faithful Indian girl at the school at Hampton. Her teacher told her—she did all of this innocently, of course—to take a certain passage of Roman history and write a paraphrase of it in her own words. So she went at it; and when the teacher read the paraphrase she was astounded at finding this statement in it: That “on a certain time the city was made sick by cooking the entrails of animals.” Well, what on earth that meant she could not imagine, nor how it got into this paraphrase, until she turned to the original passage and then she found the statement that “at a certain time the city was disturbed by intestine broils.” [Great laughter and applause.]
Now, over against that system stands the theology which starts with God as the center, as the Lord and Sovereign and Judge, as well as the Creator of the earth and men upon it; and it takes what God declares, in that which the history of the world declares to be his Word, and what the devout spirit reverently accepts as the Word of God, concerning himself and man, and man’s need, and the hereafter. Here inspiration and redemption, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, retribution in the future, time as the proof of eternity, come vividly before us as the thoughts of God. He shows them to us in characters as broad as if he had written them in a great theodicy of star-fires and enduring orbs in the heavens. This system of theology does not cast any discredit on human nature; it exalts it by showing it the object of divine solicitude. It casts the splendor and the solemnity of eternity upon the present experience and life of man; and it gives to the Bible an immeasurable and an almost inconceivable importance and value.
Now I understand perfectly that the natural tendency of men is to accept the preceding system, as the natural tendency of man is to believe that the earth is the center, and the heavens go around it. Man finds self-consciousness the first element of thought. The impulse of self-assertion appears to be the primary impulse of human nature. It is simply the egotistic man, of whom it might be said, as was said by a friend of mine, speaking rather roughly and not very elegantly about a man who was very egotistic, and who had offended him by his egotism: “I believe that that man thinks that his house is placed where the leg of the compasseswas put down when the earth was made round.” [Laughter.] There is a certain tendency in every human heart to feel that it is central, and that it has rights and privileges and possibilities belonging to itself inherently, and with which no being can properly interfere. And civilization works with its multiple forces and instruments and wealth in the same direction, taking a man feeling his lordship of the earth and reminding him more and more, and encouraging him to feel that he is lord of his destiny, and lord of the hereafter as well. There are certain philanthropic sentiments which work in the same direction, no doubt, tending to make men believe that all will be right hereafter somehow or other, and that after some possible brief unpleasantness in the future there will be a universal deliverance and restoration into holiness and its peace. And the secular spirit of the time, intense, widening, ever increasing, moves in the same direction. It enters into literature; it enters into life on every side; it finds no reality in religion; it believes it a matter of poetic aspiration, or of cultivated literary leisure, or of fine speculation, or of social observance, or possibly of ethics, or more likely of æsthetic art; but the grand reality of religion, as a bond uniting the human soul with the divine, it does not recognize or feel. It is this which gives significance and importance to infidel harangues; it is this spirit which spreads beneath and behind them. The harangues are merely the surface pustules, while the disease is within. They are the red and sulphurous flames, while the fires are underneath. And yet they multiply! The business of this city of Portland could not be carried on on the principles of these harangues. There is not a bank or an insurance company here that would not have to shut its doors if it posted within its walls, “This is an agnostic establishment. [Applause.] It is carried on upon these principles: that there is no God about whom we know anything; there is no hereafter probable; man came out of the monkey; and there is no moral law.” Let such sentiments prevail in this city, and it would have been better if the fire of a few years ago had swept away every house within it, and left nothing but the bay and the beach on which to plant a new town. And yet men love to crowd halls and pay money in order to hear these infidel speculations which are in substance as old as the ages.
And thus it comes to pass that religious thought loses its power among those who are not directly touched by such harangues,—that the influence widens continually to make the Bible a neglected book, and to make the Sabbath a secular day, to make the Church a mere convocation of people coming together at leisure to hear a lecture.
It is at such times that the spirit of liberalism, as it is called, in religious speculations tending all the time to loosen the bonds and unstring the strength of the Gospel of Christ, finds opportunity and incitement and comes more widely to prevail. Liberalism! I repudiate the term. [Applause.] I do not understand what function liberality has either in the record or in the interpretation of facts. I do not understand how he is a liberal mathematician who makes his calculations bend to the preferences of himself and of his pupils. I do not understand how he is a liberal chemist who feels at liberty to play fast and loose with the principles of his science, and will not quite affirm whether gunpowder will explode or not when fire touches it. How is he a liberal chart-maker who rubs out all the reefs and rocks and bars and warning headlands from his maps, and shows a smooth coast-line with nothing but smiling shores and welcoming bays? How is he a liberal interpreter of the globe who denies the granite above and the fire beneath, and affirms that the whole is built, if we only knew it, of excellently selected wood-pulp? What possible province has liberality in the record of facts or in the interpretation of them? I understand perfectly what liberality means as toward the opinions of others who differ from us. I understand what liberality means as toward the character of others who are entirely opposed in opinion and in action to us. Coleridge’s canon has always seemed to me perfectly to cover the ground. “Tolerate no belief,” he says, “which you deem false and of injurious tendency, but arraign no belief. The man is more and other than his belief, and God only knows how large or how small a part of him the belief in man may be.” But liberality in the statement of facts—there we want exactness, we want earnestness, we want precise fidelity to the truth of things; and there is no opportunity for what calls itself liberality there. How is it less liberal to tell a man that strychnine will kill him than to tell him that it will certainly give him a pain in his stomach? [Laughter.] How is it less liberal to tell a man that if he goes over Niagara he goes to a sure death, than it is to tell him that if he takes that awful plunge he will almost certainly wet his feet. [Laughter.] No! When a man comes to me and says, “These are the liberal doctrines; there is not probably any God; we do not know where men come from; there is no law above him; there is no retribution—or if there be any, it is a small one—waiting for him,” I say, I perfectly understand your doctrines. There is no reason why I should not. There is nothing immense or complex or mysterious about them,—in fact, they are rather thin. [Laughter.] They remind one of the pillows which one of the waiters stole at a White Mountain hotel where they didn’t have very solid pillows. They knew he stole them, because they found them on him, both of them, in his waistcoat pocket. [Laughter.] We carry these doctrines very easily in our thought and hand. There is nothing massive or majestic about them; there is nothing liberal in them. If a man is true to his convictions, he is true to them; and he has no right to be liberal in the way of giving away a part of what he believes, or hiding it under any mystery of words and imposing upon men with a thought which is not really his. And when I look at the drift and working of such doctrines, I find at once that they tend to build no grand characters; they give no motive to men for repentance and faith; they do not seek, they do not tend, to lift man nearer to the level of the holiness and happiness of God on high; they work only in degradation of character; they authorize and encourage men to imitate their grandfathers, which, on that system of doctrine, is to make beasts of themselves. [Laughter.]
So I turn to the system of truth, which takes God for its center, his law as our rule, his gospel as our light, his Son as our Redeemer, and his immortality as the possible and glorious home of every created being redeemed by the Son of God and renewed by his Spirit; and I say here is the gospel of the ancient time and of the present time. You need not call it antiquated. Everything which is best in the world is old. Sunshine is as old as the earth itself and the sun when the fire-mist was rounded into an orb,—the same to-day, playing on the streets of Portland, as when it played on the bowers of Paradise. The air is old, pouring its refreshing currents into our lungs and renewing our life to-day as in all time past. The great arch of the heavens is old; it has not been taken down and built up again on modern brick-work since the creation. These doctrines are old but full of motion, full of energy as the river is full of movements,—full of life-giving power, as the sunlight and the vital air. They are the doctrines out of which the missionary work sprang,—doctrines in which is all its life and the spring of its power. They are the doctrines of Paul, that first great missionary, of whom we heard in the sermon the other evening. He had strong convictions. He did not doubt. He knew whom he had believed, and was persuaded that he was able to keep him and to save the world. And who is the successor of Paul? Who holdsthe same faith with him and teaches it with the same earnest fidelity? I do not care to know especially what he believed unless I believe it myself. I do not want any uncertain or broken ice-bridge of outward ordinations between me and the Apostle; I want to have his faith in my heart and to preach it with the emphasis with which he preached it, and then I feel myself a successor of the great missionary to the Roman Empire. [Applause.]
Our fathers had these convictions and because of them they gave of their wealth; they prayed, they sacrificed, they gave themselves to the work. I remember as a lad in a distant school seeing that man to whom our president refers—Champion—who went out from a great fortune to lay his bones in Western Africa in the service of his Master; and though I was a careless boy, unmindful of these things, I remember that his face shone almost as the face of Stephen when he looked up and saw the Lord on high, and the vision of it has never failed to come back to me whenever I have heard his name. They gave themselves. The motive of their missionary work was found in this Gospel of Christ. This was the instrument by which they accomplished their work in other lands. This was the instrument by which Paul wrought his mighty work in his day, and those who followed him in the Empire and in barbarous tribes, wherever they could get access to men. It is this gospel which has built New England. It is this gospel which, under the power of the Spirit of God, is to change the earth—this gospel and nothing else.
Do not let us mask its doctrines in any mystery of words. Do not let us evaporate its doctrines into any thin mist of speculation. Do not let us emasculate it of its energy by taking away any of its vital forces. It seems to me that to state this gospel in novel forms and doubtful forms, in order to conciliate unbelief, is very much like the woman’s wisdom who kept the burglars out of the house by leaving all the valuables on the doorstep. [Laughter.] It seems to me that we shall have no inspiration in us, no great powerful impulse to the work, and no instrument to work with in that work, except as the old gospel of man, not a cultivated monkey but a fallen prince, of God’s law binding on him, of the light of the near eternity flashing on his spirit, of the cross of Christ and its redemptive efficacy, of the Spirit of God with his renewing power—except as this old gospel is not merely in our hands or on our lips, but is in our brains and in our hearts; and then we shall conquer. [Applause.]
Men may object to it, of course—men object to everything. I remember a gentleman on the Hudson who took a querulous Englishman—not a Canadian, [laughter]—who had been finding fault with everything from the constitution of our government down to the shape of the toes of our shoes, out to see from his place the magnificent autumnal forests on the other side of the river, and the forests on the Hudson at this season of the year are as if thousands of rainbows had fallen to the earth and lodged. Said he, “Isn’t that magnificent?” “Well, yes, that is—yes, that is very fine; but don’t you think now that it is just a little tawdry, perhaps?” [Laughter.] There is nothing men may not object to in the works or in the word of God, if their hearts set them in that direction. No matter for the objection! The Gospel of Christ, instinct with power, coming from the heart, coming on the earnest word of him who believes it, goes through objections as the cannon ball goes through mists. Do not let us doubt or fear concerning its success, if we hold it as the fathers held it. Men object to the atonement; why, it has been the life of so many millions of human hearts that the multitudes on high are now uncounted and incomputable. They object to the doctrine of regeneration; that is the doctrine which more than any other exalts man’s nature, showing the royalty of it, the greatness of it, its possibilities, and the glory of its future.
Of course men may object. Do not let us be disturbed; but always remember that, with the word of God within us and the power and providence of God behind us, and the spirit of God going before us to open ways for our progress, victory is sure. Christ seemed insane in his aim at the beginning. Speaking a few words orally to his disciples; writing no line unless he wrote one on the sand; only uttering his thought in syllables that seemed dissipated in the air, and aiming by that to conquer the world to his truth,—it seemed like expecting the whistle of a boy in these mountain valleys to go reverberating as thunder over all the earth in all the centuries. But he did it. It seemed insane to undertake to build a kingdom by gathering a few scattered followers here and there, and especially a small nucleus of obscure and uneducated men bound together by nothing but the simple sacrament of eating bread and drinking wine in memory of him,—without saint or standard or army or treasure or navy or counselors or forum,—it seemed like building another Lebanon with shovelfuls of sand, or building another Jerusalem with charred sticks and straws. But he did it. His kingdom already is in all the earth. The proudest empire which sets itself against it, shivers in the contact. Napoleon saw this on the Island of St. Helena. Comparing himself as a man ruling in the world with Christ as a Godlike person, said he, “He is God and not man.” He has done the work thus far; he is to do it in the future, if you and I adhere to the gospel, if from all our pulpits reverberate the echoes of this great meeting, if the force which is here assembled goes forth to testify of that system of religion of which God is the centre and head, which has its grandest trophy and symbol in the cross of Christ, and which opens the vast and near eternity to the apprehension of every soul conscious of unconfessed sins, and to the desiring and exulting hope of every soul that has found rest in Christ—the gospel that is to fill the world at last.
I remember when a lad, forty years ago last spring, coming for the first time into this beautiful Portland harbor from Boston by the boat. The night was windy and rough. The cabin was confined, the boat was small; and very early in the morning I went up on deck. There was nothing but the blue waste around, dark and threatening, and the clouded heavens above. At last suddenly on the horizon flashed a light, and then after a little while another, and then a little later another still, from the light-houses along the coast; and at last the light at the entrance of this harbor became visible just as “the fingers of the dawn” were rushing up into the sky. As we swept around into the harbor the sunrise gun was fired from the cutter or corvette lying in the harbor, the band struck up a martial and inspiring air, the great splendor of the rising sun flooded the whole view, and every window-pane on these hills, as seen from the boat, seemed to be a plate of burnished gold let down from the celestial realms.
Ah! my friends, we are drawing nearer to the glory of the latter day. I have thought of that vision often. I thought of it then in my early carelessness, as representing what might be conceived of the entrance into heaven. I have thought of it as I have stood by the bed of the dying and seen their faces flush and flash in a radiance that I could not apprehend. I have thought of it this week as I have been in these meetings. The lights are brightening along the coast; the darkness is disappearing; the harbor is not far off; the Sun of Righteousness is to arise in all the earth, and the golden glory of the new Jerusalem is to be established here. Let it be ours in that great day to remember that we held the faith, we triumphed by the Cross, we stood with Paul and with the Son of God, taking God’s revelation for our inspiration and doing our work under that mighty impulse.
And unto God be all the praise. [Great applause.]
[Concluded.]
Now the clear, transparent air permits heat to be shot off, or rayed through it with great freedom. But it does not readily receive heat “by conveyance,” so long as it is still. If you put your hand into still air which is as cold as a cold metal knob, you do not know that the air is so chill as the metal, because it does not make your hand so cold. The heat is not conveyed away from your hand as quickly. When air ismoving, instead of being still, the case is, however, altogether altered. A current of air, or wind, carries away heat from warm bodies very quickly as it blows over them. It does so because each fresh little particle of air which is pressed against them, receives its own share of the heat, and conveys it away, leaving fresh particles to come up in their turn, and do the same thing. A pint of boiling water in a metal pot placed in a strong wind having fifty degrees of heat, would lose all its excess of heat as soon again as it would if standing in still air having the same warmth. The old plan of cooling hot tea or broth by blowing it, is correct in principle, though not in accordance with good taste.
The laboratory of the living animal body has the supply of its fuel, and the capacity of its air-blasts, so arranged that just about as much heat is supplied through its internal furnace, as is lost from its surface by “raying off” and “conveyance,” when the surrounding air has a warmth of sixty degrees of the heat scale, and when its surface is somewhat protected by a light covering of clothing, to lessen the rapidity with which the heat is shot off and conveyed away. The heat is then produced as rapidly in the internal furnace, as it is thrown off from the outer surface, and the consequence is that the animalfeels comfortably warm. It only feels uncomfortablyhot, when more heat is produced in the furnace of the living laboratory than can be scattered through its surface. And it only feels uncomfortablycoldwhen more heat is scattered from the surface than can be kept up through the burning of the inner furnace.
But in winter time the cold external air carries away heat much more quickly from the surface of living animals, than the warmer external air does in summer time. Here, then, is a little difficulty to be met, if the warmth of the body is to be kept precisely the same in both seasons. It is requisite that it should be always maintained at the same point, because that point is the one which is most suitable for the operations which are being carried on in the vessels and chambers of its laboratory. Nature has two distinct ways in which she insures this end.
In the first place, are you not aware that you get more hungry in winter than you do in summer time? All living animals have pretty much the same experience as yourself in this particular, and the reason is that nature intends, during the cold season, to have more fuel introduced into the supply-pipes of the body for the warming of its structures. The furnace of the laboratory gets quickened in a small degree; its slow fires are fanned into slightly increased activity, more fuel is burned, and so more heat is generated to meet the greater demand for it, dependent on the influence of the external cold.
But nature also thickens the clothing of animals during the cold season, and so affords increased obstruction, through which the escaping heat has to force its way. Have you not observed the sleek silky coat which the horse wears through the summer, and then noticed at the beginning of winter how this sleek coat is exchanged for a thick, fuzzy shag, that looks more like wool than hair? The warm winter coat economizes the heat produced in the furnace of the living body, and keeps it from being scattered to waste as quickly as it is through the sleek summer coat. This is nature’s other plan of meeting the difficulty brought about by the changing temperature of the air. Nearly all animals belonging to temperate and cold climates have this change of apparel provided for them in spring and autumn, but in some cases the change is rendered very striking in consequence of a summer garment of bright gay colors being replaced by a winter one of pure and spotless white. The fierce tyrant of the ice land himself, the polar bear, has a dingy yellow coat during the summer, but puts on furs as snowy as his own realms when once the summer sun has disappeared. These white winter furs are always warmer than dark ones. Birds which do not migrate to warmer regions of the earth in the cold season, have winter and summer suits of apparel, just in the same way as quadrupeds. In the winter a lining of the thick, soft white down is added beneath the outer feathers. There is one little bird which comes to England in the late autumn, driven there by the still greater cold further north, and which is familiarly known as having two remarkably different costumes for his English and his foreign residence. In England the snow-bunting appears with a white body and tail, but abroad and in summer time he is distinguished by a brilliant black tail and back, and a body and head of pure white.
Man follows the example which nature has set before him, in the matter of clothing. He prepares himself stout warm garments for winter time, and thin cool ones for the summer; and not only this; in the hottest regions of the earth, where there is most sunshine, he commonly goes nearly naked, while in the coldest regions, near the poles, he puts on the heaviest and warmest woolens and furs that he can procure. Now this is one reason why man has beenapparentlyso uncared for by nature in the particular of clothing. The seeming indifference and carelessness is really consideration of the highest kind. All the different races of the lower animals have their own narrow tracts assigned them for their residence. In these tracts there is no very extreme diversity of temperature, and provision is therefore easily made to adapt their clothing to it just so far as is required. The human race, on the other hand, is intended to cover the entire earth, and to subdue it; to spread itself from the burning tropics to the frigid poles. The heat which has to be borne in the tropics, is as much greater than that which is experienced near the poles in winter time, as boiling water is hotter than ice. At the poles, one hundred degrees of frost often occur. In India, there are occasionally one hundred and thirty degrees of heat under the canvas of tents. It therefore becomes an affair of almost absolute necessity, that the skin of the widely scattered lords of creation should be as unencumbered as possible, and that warm clothing should have to be prepared and added as a covering whenever circumstances call for its use. The head only, of the human being, has a natural fur garment. This part of the body is covered with hair, because the most delicate portion of the entire frame, the brain, is contained within it. The skull is protected by hair, that the brain may not be hurt by too sudden a change from cold to heat, or from heat to cold.
There is another advantage attending upon the arrangement which has left human beings dependent upon an artificial supply of clothing, and which has ordained that they shall come into the world with naked skins. In consequence of this arrangement it is very easy to secure that amount of cleanliness which is necessary for the preservation of the health of such delicately framed creatures. The artificial clothes can be altogether changed at will, and they can be washed and aired, as they never could be if they were inseparably attached to the skin. Then, too, they can be removed from the skin in the early morning, or at convenient intervals, and its surface can be thoroughlycleansed and purified by bathing with water. Just think of the difference of going into a bath of refreshing water unencumbered by clothes, and of doing the same with thick, dabby garments clinging about you, and having to shake yourselves like great Newfoundland dogs when you come out; and also recall to mind the pleasure you experience every time you change soiled linen for clean, and you will become sensible of how much you owe to beneficent nature for having left you destitute of the feathers of the bird, or the fur of the bear. The extreme importance of making a fair use of this privilege has been already alluded to in its proper place.
But nature has effected yet another very bountiful provision for the comfort and safety of her tender charge, the living human animal. Even when only covered by very light clothing, it is possible human beings may be placed in air which is so warm, that heat is not carried off from their bodies so fast as it is produced in the interior furnace. In India, it sometimes happens that the air gets to be even hotter than the living body. All movement of the air, then, heats, rather than cools. Under such circumstances, nature adopts a very effectual course to prevent warmth from collecting more and more in the frame, until a disagreeable and injurious amount has been reached. Having first reduced the supply of fuel to the smallest limits consistent with keeping the fire going, by lessening the appetite, and by taking away the craving for heating food, and having given a hint to adopt such outer coverings for the body as are as little obstructive of the passage of heat as possible, the heat drenches the surface of the frame abundantly with moisture, which has the power to cool by its ready evaporation. Take a small piece of wet linen and lay it upon your forehead, or upon your arm, leaving it freely exposed to the air, and you will find, that as the moisture evaporates from the linen, your skin underneath will feel colder and colder. The heat of the skin is used up in converting the moisture of the linen into steam, exactly as the heat of a fire is used up in converting the water of a kettle into steam when this is made to boil. The steam flies away with the warmth of the skin very rapidly, and consequently the skin soon comes to feel cold. Now, when the body gets to be very warm, and the over-heated blood is rapidly pouring through the channels of its supply pipes, then the three millions of little holes or pores, which lie upon its surface, are opened, and floods of vapor and water are poured through them, producing just the same kind of effect as wet linen would do. This action is termed “perspiration,” or a “steaming through” the pores of the skin. The breathing blows up, or fans the slow furnace contained within the living animal frame, and so heats it above the surrounding air. The perspiration carries away portions of this heat when it has been raised too high, and so cools the heated body down. Some moisture also escapes as steam from the lungs and through the mouth in breathing, thus assisting the perspiring skin in its office of diminishing the excessive warmth of the body. You have often seen dogs, which have been heated by running, pant with opened mouths and outstretched tongues, the vapor steaming forth from their gaping throats. Dogs cool themselves in this way because they have very little perspiration passing through their skins. Their perspiration is really from their throats, rather than from their skins. Human beings sometimes lose, in hot weather, as much as five pints of water in twenty-four hours, by exhalation through the lungs and skin.
Give me now, good reader, your close attention for just a few minutes while I return to the notion with which we started on beginning the consideration of this subject, so that I may fit it into its right place, and leave it well packed away with the other notions that we have gained, while studying the value and uses of air, water, and food. Your body is a living laboratory, formed of an enormous quantity of little chambers and vessels. From a strong central force-pump, placed in the middle of that laboratory, liquefied food, or blood, is streamed out through branching supply-pipes to the several chambers, to carry to them the materials that have to be operated upon in their cavities for the production of animal power and warmth. The force-pump acts by repeated short strokes, but the liquefied food flows through chambers of the laboratory in continuous, even currents, because the supply-pipes are made of yielding and elastic substance, like India-rubber, and not of hard, stiff substance, like metal or wood. As the liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump, the elastic walls of the supply-pipes are stretched by the gush, but directly afterwards they shrink back again, as India-rubber would do, shut close a valve that prevents all return of the liquid into the force-pump, and so compel the liquid to run onwards in the other direction, through the pipes. Before the shrinking in of the pipes has altogether ended, the force-pump renews its stroke, and so the onward flow of the liquid never stays, although the pump has to make beat after beat. The liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump with a speed of about a foot in each second; but it has to supply such an enormous host of small chambers in the remote parts of the laboratory, that it does not flow through them with a speed greater than an inch in a minute. This, however, is no disadvantage, as it affords plenty of time for the full carrying out of all the intended changes in those chambers, whereby animal power and warmth are to be produced.
Remember, then, that as your heart beats in your chest, second after second, the red blood flushes through every crevice and every fibre of your living frame, just as it does through your cheek when it is crimsoned with a blush. Seventy or eighty times every minute, your beating heart pumps, and constantly, so long as you are alive, the flushing blood streams on everywhere. The blood, however, streams on in this continuous way, because its flow is not stopped, even when it has reached the remotest chambers and fibers. The trunks of the supply-pipes divide into branching twigs, which get very fine indeed where they are in connection with the working chambers of the laboratory, and which then lead on into return-pipes, that are gathered together into enlarging trunks, These, in their turn, are collected into main tubes which end in the cavity of the heart. At the extremity of these main trunks of the return-pipes, valves are so placed as to prevent the pumping action of the heart from forcing the blood back into them. Thus, as your heart pumps, swelling out and drawing in its walls, the blood flows into its cavity by the return-pipes, and is squeezed out therefrom through the supply-pipes. It always streams in one direction. It circulates through the living frame which it flushes; that is, it goes in an endless circle, now through the heart, now through the supply-pipes, now through the return-pipes, and now starts once again through the heart.
But as your blood thus circulates, through your living frame, fresh nourishment, newly dissolved food, is added in some places to its streams; in other places nourishment and fuel are taken from it to furnish the active chambers of the laboratory with warmth and power; in other places worn-out substance is added to it to be carried away in its current; and at other places this worn-out substance is poured away from it through the outlets provided for its removal. The principal outlets through which the waste of your living laboratory is poured away, have been already spoken of in detail—they are the pores of the skin, the drains of the laboratory; and the pores of the lungs, that with the mouth form the chimney of the laboratory throughwhich the smoke and the vapors from the burned fuel fly away. In addition to these outlets, there is, however, another series by which some denser matters, which can not be got through either the skin-pores or the lungs, are streamed away. This series is continually in operation, but the details of its arrangements are so ingeniously planned, that it accommodates its work to the demand of each passing instant. When, for instance, the perspiring pores of the skin are widely open for the cooling of the frame, and an increased amount of liquid is consequently steamed away through them, then these outlets are narrowed; but when, on the other hand, the skin-pores are closed, or when any extra flood of liquid is thrown into the interior of the frame during cold weather, then the additional outlets at once are brought into very active play.
Now, just imagine the case of a large town, in which there is a certain quantity of waste liquid needing to be carried away through drain-pipes every day, but in which also there occur occasional excessive floods of rain, which must have a way of escape provided for them whenever they happen. How clever you would think it if some skillful engineer fixed valves in the drain-pipes of that town, which kept themselves fast closed under ordinary circumstances, but which opened of their own accord whenever the pressure of an extra flood came, and so allowed the excess of liquid to flow safely and freely away. Such has really been the proceeding of the skillful Engineer of your living frame. Your body is exposed to the risk of occasional excessive floods. When the weather is very cold, for instance, the pores of your skin are closed, and not more than a single pint of liquid can force its way out through them, in the place of the four pints which would pass in warm weather. Much of the water which would otherwise have escaped from the channels of the supply-pipes, then remains in them, coursing round in the progress of the circulation. Sometimes, too, in all probability you will be tempted to swallow an unreasonable quantity of liquid, beyond any demand the mere process of cooling an over-heated frame can require. But whenever you have thus set up an unusual internal flood, sluice-gates are opened, and through these the excess is rapidly poured until the flood is got rid of. In those parts of your body which have been named the kidneys, there are pores through which waste liquid is always draining, without being turned into vapor or steam; but in the kidneys there are also chambers composed of very fine walls, which are strong enough to prevent fluid from passing through them when it is only pressed by a gentle force, but which are not strong enough to do so when the pressure becomes greater in consequence of the over-flooding of the supply-pipes. The kidneys are the sluice-gates of your body, provided with outlets for common use, and with self-acting valves which come into operation upon occasions of excessive flood.
Thus astonishing, then, is the care which has been taken in perfecting the arrangements of the heating service of that complicated laboratory, your living body. Fuel is thrown into an internal furnace, more or less plentifully, according to need. The fuel is there burned, and fanned by air-blasts, which are strengthened or weakened as the occasion may require. The heat produced by the burning is economized by external packings and wrappings, or it is scattered by the opening of evaporating pores on the external surface, and by the drenching of that surface with steaming moisture; and self-acting valves are provided to regulate the quantity of liquid contained in the supply-pipes, so that the cooling pores may never be forced into mischievous activity by the mere pressure of excess in their channels, at a time when the body is already sufficiently chill.
When cold is suddenly applied to the previously warm skin of the living body, it shuts up all the perspiring pores at once, and then empties its supply-pipes of their streaming blood inwards. You know how pale and numb your skin becomes on a cold frosty day, when you stand quietly in the chilling air. That is because the cold squeezes all the blood out of the small vessels of your skin. But where do you suppose the squeezed-out blood goes to? It flows directly into the several internal parts, choking up and overloading their channels. If the skin be soon made warm again, the overloaded parts of the inside once more get emptied, and recover their usual freedom; but if it be kept cold, then their overloading and choking continues, and great discomfort is experienced. All kinds of inflammations and disorders are produced in this way. What are commonly known as colds are internal obstructions of this nature. Cold in the head is an affection in which the lining of the nostrils is overcharged with stagnating blood. Sore throat is caused by a similar condition in the lining of the throat. And cough by the same state in the lining of the vessels and cavities of the chest.
The mere application of a chill temperature to the skin is not alone, however, enough to give a cold. This result chiefly comes when the application has been made while the body is in a weakened or exhausted state, and therefore has not the power to resist and overcome the internal disturbance of the even blood-flow. Colds are nearly always caught in consequence of a sudden exposure of the body to a chill, either when it is in a state of exhaustion and fatigue from sustained exertion, or when it has been for some time previously over-heated. Excess of heat itself soon produces exhaustion, and depression of the strength and the powers of life. When a chill is applied to the skin while the body is fresh and strong, as, for instance, when a man pours cold water over himself the instant he gets out of a warm bed in the morning, after a sound and refreshing sleep, it does no harm, for this reason: First, the blood is driven away from the supply-pipes of the skin by the cold, and flows inwards; but the refreshed heart, then becoming sensible of its arrival, rouses itself to increased effort, and prevents obstruction by pumping on the liquid more vigorously. By this means blood is soon sent back again to the skin in great abundance, and makes it glow with renewed warmth. It is only when the cold is very severe, or very long continued, that this re-action, as it is called, would be hindered, and internal disorder be likely to be set up.
Here, then, is one of the advantages of employing warm clothing. It prevents the catching of cold by protecting the skin from sudden chills at a time when the internal parts of the frame are depressed and unable to meet, without injury, the effects which follow upon it. If at any time you are very weary, and very warm, remember, then, that you must keep yourself warm by drawing more clothes round you, or by some other plan. Want of attention to this very simple proceeding, or absolute ignorance that it ought to be adopted, is among the common means whereby men lay up for themselves disease and suffering, and cause sickness to take the place of health.
How constantly it happens, at the very first appearance of fine weather in spring, that sore throats and coughs and colds are met with everywhere. This is nearly always because people are then tempted to throw aside the warm clothing which they have used through the winter, and so to leave their skins very much more exposed to the influences of the sudden chills, which are quite sure to occur at this time. Just observe what nature herself does in this matter. She does not take off the horse’s warm coat the moment the spring sunshine bursts out in the sky. She compels him to keep it upon his back, at the risk of his being a good deal encumbered by it now and then, because it is better he should submit to this small inconvenience for atime, rather than be exposed to the danger of a grave disease. As you may advantageously take a lesson from the bee as to the management of fresh air in your dwellings, so you may advantageously go to the quadruped to learn how to manage the alteration of your clothing at the change of the seasons. When you see the horse putting on his fine silken garment for summer, follow his example; but until you do see this, be wise, and still keep within the protection of your winter wools and furs.
There is another plan by which people every day expose themselves to the danger of catching cold, and of so falling into disease. They commonly sit in very draughty rooms; apartments which are warmed by bright fires, but which are at the same time chilled by cold wind rushing in at large crannies and crevices, far beyond the quantity which is needed for the mere supply of pure air. Such rooms are warm and cold climates brought together in a nutshell. There is a scorching summer near the fire, and a freezing winter near the window at the same instant. Merely walking about the room therefore takes the body in a moment from one climate to another, and this must happen sometimes when the body is not prepared to meet, and accommodate itself to, the change. A chilled surface, and internal obstructions result, and colds and diseases follow very soon. The inside of rooms should be in winter time very much what they are in the summer season; that is, not too hot, but equally warm in all parts, and with a sufficient current of air passing through them to keep them pure, although not with enough to set up dangerous draughts. If there are draughts, then the protection of warm clothing must be constantly employed, to prevent the chilling influence from attacking the skin. Warm and undraughty dwelling-rooms are the natural allies of warm clothes in health-preserving power.
There is another very excellent companion and helper of warm clothes in this good work. This helper is “exercise.” If, when you are weary and warm, and have no additional clothes to draw round you on the instant to prevent a chill, you sit down or stand still in the cold wind, you will be nearly sure to catch cold, and to be made ill. But if, on the other hand, you keep moving about until you can either clothe yourself more warmly, or go into a warm room, then you will be almost as certain to escape without harm. Exercise aids the heart in keeping the blood moving briskly, and if at any time there is an inclination for the blood-flow to stagnate and get obstructed internally, then exercise overcomes the obstruction, and sends the lagging blood cheerily on toward all parts of the frame, and back toward the skin. Brisk exercise thus possesses the power to overcome mischief, as well as to prevent it. Its influence in quickening and sustaining the flow of the blood-streams through the supply-pipes of the body, necessarily leads in the end to the strengthening of every structure in the frame, and to the rousing of every operation that is carried on in the living laboratory. Every one who values the blessing of health and strength will do well, if his daily task is not one of exertion in the open air, to make such a task for himself. One hour at least out of the twenty-four should be spent in quickening the blood-streams, and in deepening the breathing by walking briskly in some open space where the fresh winds of heaven have free play.
But we will now imagine that in ignorance of all these particulars, or in consequence of some long-continued exertion and exposure which the demands of duty made it altogether impossible for you to avoid, you have caught a cold, and are beginning to suffer from a sore throat, or a cough, or some other sign that matters within are not as they should be. What, under such circumstances, ought you to do to stop the cold, and get rid of it, before serious disorder is brought about? Here, again, warm clothing is of the highest value. If the chilled surface be at once closely covered up, and be kept covered, the blood is soon drawn back to the skin, and the internal obstructions are in this way overcome. The best possible way to get rid of a cold quickly, for those who can follow it, is to go to bed as soon as it begins, and to keep there until the cold is cured. If you can not follow this plan, thendrink as little of any fluid as you canfor four or five days, and there will soon be not enough blood, as regards quantity, in your body, to keep internal parts overcharged, and they will be relieved, and you will get well. There is this evil in the first plan of curing a cold: people who have lain in bed for some time, come out of it with the pores of their skins more than usually opened, and more than usually disposed to suffer from any fresh chill. People who pursue the second plan may be exposed in any way without meeting this risk.
There are thus, then, golden rules for the management of the clothing, as well as for the management of the feeding, which all people should have stamped on their understandings, and engraved upon their memories. These are:
Follow the example which nature sets, and wear thicker clothing in cold weather than in warm.
Do not lay aside the warm clothing of winter, as soon as fine, mild weather seems to have begun, but wait until you see that nature is taking their winter garments away from the birds and the beasts.
Never expose yourself to a chill without extra clothing, when you are weary, as well as warm.
Never sit in draughts of cold air without putting on extra clothing.
Keep in brisk exercise when you are unable to avoid currents of chill air, and are at the same time fatigued by exertion, and thinly clad.
Never remain in damp clothes longer than you can help. Damp clothes chill the surface of the body very rapidly by carrying away its heat as the moisture is turned into steam. Wet stockings, and boots, or shoes, are injurious, for the same reason as other kinds of wet clothing. They are not more dangerous than other kinds of damp garments, but they have to be encountered much more frequently on account of the ground often remaining wet for long periods, when there is no great excess of moisture in the air. Wet feet produce harm more frequently than wet clothes, because they are much more common.
By a careful and constant attendance to the principles laid down in these golden rules, the attacks of many grave diseases may be avoided, and the advantage which is intended to result from the influence of warm clothes may be most certainly secured.