THE BREATH OF LIFE

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

THE BREATH OF LIFE.

AND the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Gen. ii, 7.

THE most common of all things is common air. All are familiar with some general facts of its existence, but there is usually little thought as to its wonderful properties, its universal presence, and its varied agencies.

As a garment of invisible white, probably at least one hundred miles thick, it envelops the entire earth, pressing on every part of the earth's surface at the level of the sea, with a weight of fifteen pounds to a square inch, yet it is so elastic, that it gives to every moving body in it the utmost freedom of motion. Not only is it a perfect fit, conforming to all the elevations and depressions of the globe, but it diffuses itself through the vast world of waters, mingles with porous earth, and penetrates the most solid rocks. It is also the grand medium of communication between ocean, hill-top and plain; lifting the vapors of water, silently floating them over all lands to fall in soft dews, diffused mists, gentle rains and pouring floods. In it the clouds nestle, the vivid lightning plays, and voices are given to the reverberating thunder. Itself invisible, it scatters and mellows the sun's rays into a glorious flood, so adapted to the eye as to give color, form and beauty to all earthly things. Silent and odorless it brings to our ears all the sweet harmonies of sounds, and opens to the portals of our senses the sweet fragrance of plant and flowers. In the absence of “the air we breathe,” music ceases to produce any effect, and the most odoriferous perfume drops to the ground unnoticed and is lost.

But what are the wonders of its vastness and diffusiveness; its penetration and elasticity; what its storms, lightnings, and thunders; what as the medium of sight and sound, when compared with the deeper mysteries of its silent work and power in living animate forms? The whole of the vegetable and animal kingdoms owe their existence to common air. Plants are made up of the constant elements of embodied, solidified, organized air. The air we breathe, “the breath of life,” is a compound of twenty parts of oxygen, and eighty of nitrogen, usually holding in suspension a greater or less amount of carbonic acid, nitric acid, ammonia, watery vapor, etc., and constitutes the “invisible loom,” as well as the warp and woof, from which are woven, by the “flying shuttles of light,” all the tissues of the tiny flower and the sturdy oak; of the sensitive mimosa, and the towering pine.

More startling, more overwhelming, however, is the fact that the materials of all animal substances and structures are identical with those of vegetables, and that their origin and development is likewise affected through the influence of common air.

The atmosphere which man incessantly breathes from his birth is the great source of active life; the fountain from which springs all the powers and susceptibilities of his being. In those never-ceasing rhythmic movements of inspiration and expiration, in that continuous ebbing and flowing of the great gaseous ocean through the mechanism alone, is life. When inhalation and exhalation cease, the blood immediately becomes overcharged with poisonous matter; the heart, unable to perform its work, is still, and life ends.

How wonderful, too, the apparatus for supplying the human organism with this vitalizing element! Within a healthy man's chest are about 1,700,000,000 air chambers presenting 1,500 square feet of surface, covered with a delicate membrane, beneath which lies a vast net-work of capillary blood vessels, and into these almost innumerable chambers two hundred and twenty cubic inches of air rush at each inspiration, thus imparting freely to the circulation, through the lungs, the active agent, oxygen. By this beautiful arrangement, the lungs become the grand fountain-head from which flow streams of oxygen through the arterial channels to every living tissue, as well as the outlet to poisonous gases, flowing back by counter, or venous currents. This stream of oxygen by its wide range of chemical affinities, and combining energy, kindles and maintains all bodily vitalities.

Not a thought can spring from the brain, not an act be performed, without its decomposing and energizing power. Cut off the supply of oxygen from a muscle, and it soon becomes paralyzed, attenuated and dead; stop its flow to the brain, and there is nought of mind left; blank unconsciousness will result. The whole tone of the mind and body is rendered intense or feeble, in proportion to the ample or deficient supply of oxygen through the air we breathe.

“Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn,” owe their glow to a free and full supply of good air. He who breathes most of the life-giving principle, thinks most, acts most, while a deficiency of it weakens also the springs of thought and action. Full expansion of the lungs in pure air, rich in oxygen, should be regarded more than meat and drink, as the most potent agent for the promotion of health, and the cure of disease. “The breath of life” (oxygen diluted with nitrogen, to prevent overstimulation), when breathed by man, renews the blood, restores and maintains the equilibrium of the circulation, perfects the secretions, quickens the thought and action, gives tone to vitality, activity to the senses, and healthfulness to the whole organism.

With this view of the importance of “the breath of life; of its wonderful effect on all animated nature, and its happy result on the system of man, is it astonishing that the Divine Record has, in its account of man's formation, also shown the means employed to vitalize the product of creative power and wisdom? Is it surprising that God should, (in revealing to man his origin, development, and the means by which he lives,) after setting forth the “material” entering into his structure as a man, also reveal the means by which his complicated machinery was perfected and set in motion?

It seems much more surprising that, in the very minute account given of the modus operandi of man's creation, if God had given him an undying spirit, an ever-living, immortal, never-ending soul, no record or even hint is given of it. The declarations are very plain relative to the whole work, thus: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and MAN BECAME a living soul,’ (Gen. ii, 7,) ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ Gen. iii, 2, 3. ‘All flesh shall perish, and MAN shall turn again to dust.’ Job xxiv, 15. ‘Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust.’ Ps. civ, 29. These testimonies might be extended, but the above are sufficient to explain the nature of the materials used in man's formation, especially so, when the fact that not one plain statement either of the existence, reception, nature, effect, locality, present condition, or futurity of any other entity can be found in the revelation of God. One more text may be added for solution: ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ Eccl. xii, 7. Under the preceding view of “The breath of life,” how beautifully clear and plain this statement becomes. God having provided a vast ocean of “breath of life,” (spirit), when man no longer requires the spirit,

(breath of life,) because of his disease, it at once returns to God, combining with its kindred element, in its common receptacle.

To return is to go back to the same place; then for the dust to return to the earth, pre-supposes that it must have been there before, and for the breath to RETURN to God who gave it, plainly indicates its finale.

Vain philosophers! unstable subjects of superstition! who are ye that darken counsel by words without knowledge? Remember that the word of the Lord endureth forever, and will stand when your superstitious errors and traditions, after subjugating you to the fierceness of God's wrath, shall have passed like a mist into oblivion.—Herald of the Kingdom.