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THE ONE SOURCE OF LIFE

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 28, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 4.

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THE ONE SOURCE OF LIFE.

By W. B. Holden

All matter is divided into four kingdoms,—the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the spiritual.
In Gen. 1: 11 the Lord speaks to the mineral kingdom, bidding it to bring forth the vegetable kingdom. After God had created the animal kingdom, and man, the highest type of the animal kingdom, He calls upon the vegetable kingdom to sustain the animal kingdom. Gen. 1: 29. In Col. 1: 13 the spiritual kingdom is mentioned. “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.”
As the types of these four kingdoms we will use soil, wheat, man, and the Christian.
If we were to analyze the chemical elements in a sack of wheat and those in a sack of soil, we should find that the sack of wheat contains no element which cannot be found in the sack of soil. But the sack of wheat has life, has power, and is capable of doing things which the sack of soil, of itself, cannot do. The difference between the sack of earth and the sack of wheat is a difference of life, and of life only. This life is a power that is imparted to the soil, and represents a divine impartation of life in each and every grain of wheat.
No man yet has been able to make a single kernel of wheat out of the chemical elements. It is possible to construct out of chemical elements a chemical substance like the chemical substance of wheat, but no man has made or ever will make out of earth a kernel of wheat which will be capable of producing another kernel of wheat.
The life, the real essential thing in the kernel of wheat, is divine life, and cannot be explained apart from that miraculous manifestation of life.
A sack of wheat and a man contain the same chemical elements. There is nothing found in one which cannot be found in the other, generally speaking. But one has more power, and is capable of doing more than the other. Where does the man obtain this additional power? The answer is the same as in the preceding comparison. He gets it only by a divine impartation of life.
Physiologists tell us how a man can bake his wheat into bread; how it is partly dissolved by the saliva of the mouth, partly dissolved by the stomach juices, and how finally the process is completed by the intestinal juices. They tell us how some of it is absorbed by the blood, and some of it by the lymphatics. They tell us in what forms food, after it has been used, is carried away from the body by the kidneys, the skin, and the lungs. But just where the bread becomes brain and bone and muscle—in other words, where it ceases to be a part of the vegetable kingdom and becomes a part of the animal kingdom—no one has ever been able to explain, except by using the term “a chemico-vital change,” which means nothing else than a direct addition of divine life to the wheat.
No man has ever yet been able or ever will be able to take food substances and build up a man out of these. The real essential man is a miraculous manifestation of divine power.
The sinner and the Christian weigh the same; they both have the same muscles, the same bones, the same anatomical and physical characteristics; but one can do what the other cannot do. One can overcome where the other is overcome. The only difference between these two is again a divine impartation of life. Christ said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10: 10.
Soil plus the life of God equals wheat.
Wheat plus the life of God equals man.
Man plus the life of God equals a Christian.
In order to obtain wheat from soil, wheat must be placed in certain relations to soil; that is, it must be planted, given water and sunlight. But the giving of the life is none the less miraculous, none the less real, and none the less divine.
In order that man should be nourished from bread, a certain condition between the two must be present; that is, the bread must be eaten. Bread placed upon the skin would not nourish nor sustain life. But the real miracle in transforming wheat into man is none the less wonderful.
In order for a Christian to be made out of a sinner, certain conditions must be fulfilled,—the sinner must be willing, and must repent.
In each of these cases there is a direct translating power from above. It is a lifting force, and not a pushing force. Soil of itself cannot become wheat. Wheat of itself cannot become man. Man of himself cannot become a Christian. Wheat must lift up earth into the vegetable kingdom. Man must lift up wheat into the animal kingdom. Christ must lift up man into the spiritual kingdom.
This is diametrically opposed to the theory of evolution. Thus we have ever before our eyes, in the wheat fields and in the physiology of our own bodies, countless evidences that evolution is false as applied to life and morality.
Conversion and the new birth are as reasonable, as scientific, as explainable, as the existence of a kernel of wheat, or the digestion and appropriation of a breakfast. No one doubts the fact that a kernel of wheat put into the ground will grow and produce others. No one doubts that our food gives us strength and power. But many seem to doubt the power of the new birth, because, they say, it is supernatural,—they cannot see the reason for it. “The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” Rom. 1: 20.
God is a reasonable being. He made man a reasonable creature. He asks us to believe nothing without giving us abundant evidences of its truth. How few of us have seen in the flower, in the blade of grass, in all vegetation about us, the evidence that there is power from the same source of life to “translate us into the kingdom of His dear Son”! How many meals have we eaten and failed to see in the appropriation of the food the same power manifested which might be ours to lead a better life? How many times have we failed to see “the invisible things of Him” because we did not clearly see, or perhaps did not recognize at all, “the things that are made.”
We read about the giving of the manna, and call it a wonderful manifestation of divine life,—a miracle,—and do not recognize that the same miracle is repeated for us daily. God worked no more marvelously in the widow’s barrel of meal in the days of Elijah than He works now in your barrel of meal. The wine at the marriage feast of Cana had no more divinity in it than the wine in the grapes which we eat to-day. We have become so accustomed to looking at the exceptions that we forget the great multitudes of God’s daily miracles.
We look upon the healing of Hezekiah’s boil as remarkable, but every boil which has been healed before or since is just as distinctly a divine healing. In the miracles of Christ we recognize a wonderful divine power. This Christ, who is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever,” is working just as wonderfully in healing all our diseases.
The Christian character is a product of growth and development. “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” “Ye must be born again.” “Grow in grace.” The Christian character requires a lifetime for its perfection. It is not the product of a few moments’ flight of feeling. The thief on the cross perfected the Christian character in a very short time. It was an emergency case, like the turning of the water into wine at Cana. It requires a lifetime for us to do as much. The growth and development of an even Christian experience has just as much power in it as there was in the conversion of Paul, or in that of the thief on the cross.
“As the Father hath life in himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in himself.” John 5: 26. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Acts 17: 28. “With thee is the fountain of life.” Ps. 36: 9.
There is no better way to honor and serve our Heavenly Father than to recognize Him working in the life of the vegetable kingdom in all its various manifestations, in the wonderful phenomena of our physical lives, and thus have a tangible, logical basis for the reason of the hope that is within us.
W. B. HOLDEN.