Origin of the Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul and Eternal Misery
Page 1
Review and Herald
Dec 8, 1863
The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 8, 1863
Origin of the Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul and Eternal Misery.
By Dudley Marvin Canright
It HAVING already been proved that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and eternal misery is not taught in the Scriptures (see Which? Mortal or Immortal?) the question arises, Where did it originate? and how came it in the church? For that such a doctrine is almost universally received by the professed Christians of this age, will not be denied.
These questions are easily solved by the unprejudiced reader of history. Let us examine a few facts on this subject. If I mistake not, we shall find that this doctrine originated with the idolatrous Egyptians, was received from thence and enlarged upon, by the Greeks; from Greece it was taken to Rome and introduced into the church along with other heathen institutions.
1. First, then, let us see what the Egyptians did believe on this point. "That the thinking principle in man is of an immortal nature, was believed by the Ancient Egyptians." Thomas Dick.
"The Egyptians believed that at the death of men, their souls transmigrated into other human bodies." Rollin's Anc. Hist. Vol. 1. p. 141.
"The priests adopted the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, while the belief that it will endure as long as the body exists, obtained with the people.">—Mitchell's Anc. Geog. p. 60.
"The Egyptian religion at this time (about 1600 or 1800 years B. C.) was the worship of a crowd of gods, of which some were stone statues and others living animals; and it was against these and other Egyptian superstitions, that many of the laws of Moses were directly pointed.">—Howe's Bartlett's Glimpses of Egypt.
From these testimonies, it appears that the doctrine was not yet fully established, as a majority of the people believed that the soul existed only as long as the body could be kept from decaying; and hence their great care to embalm the body. Even the priests had not yet advanced so far as to suppose that the soul could exist separate from the body. From these facts, I say, it is evident that the doctrine was then in its infancy; and that it was not yet comprehended in all its beauty and sublimity! as it was taught by Socrates and Plato, who had the glory of bringing it to perfection. I suppose it is not very flattering to immortal-soulists to know that the "foundation of their religion," originated with a set of such gross idolators as the Egyptians were: but I do not know how they can successfully deny the fact.
It may be objected that the Egyptians living at this early period, might have obtained this doctrine by tradition from their fathers, who had worshipped the true God. But the reader will bear in mind that immortal-soulists do not believe in the transmigration of the soul, and hence will not allow that this part could come from God. That the early books of the Bible, or those written by Moses, do not reveal the immortality of the soul, is acknowledged even by the advocates of natural immortality. And if these books did not teach it, certainly it could not have been obtained from this source.
Gibbon justly remarks that "we might naturally expect that a principle so essential to religion, would have been revealed in the clearest terms to the chosen people of Palestine, and that it might safely have been entrusted to the hereditary priesthood of Aaron. It is incumbent on us to adore the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when we discover that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses.">—Decline and Fall. Vol. 1. p. 530.
In his note on this passage of Gibbon, the learned H. H. Milman says, "This remarkable fact as far as the law of Moses, is unquestionable. . . . Modern writers have accounted in various ways for the silence of the Hebrew legislator on the immortality of the soul." He accounts for it by supposing that it might have been "more pernicious than useful to the people"—a supposition which is fully corroborated by its baneful effects at the present time.
The inquiry naturally arises, If such a doctrine was never taught by divine authority, how did the idea of a future life come to be so universally received by the human family? A conditional promise of a future life was made to Adam, Gen. iii, 15, but it was to be through the resurrection. Acts xxvi, 6-8. 1 Cor. xv, 21, 22.
The idea of a future life would naturally be remembered, while the means by which it was to be obtained would be easily forgotten. This we find to be the case; while nearly all nations have some idea of a future life, the notions as to how that life is to be obtained and what its occupations are to be, are as numerous as the nations themselves.
2. Did the Greeks obtain their religion from Egypt? They did, the basis and main pillars of their system. Of course their own national customs and peculiarities were interwoven with them; but the main point—the immortality of the soul—was retained and enlarged upon.
"It is well known, that Plato, Socrates and other Greek philosophers, held the doctrine of the soul's immortality.">—Dick's Works Vol. 1. p. 18.
"The elements of their (the Greek's) religious worship were derived by the Greeks either from Asia or Egypt.">—Mitchell's Anc. Geog. p. 80.
"In the time of Moses, the Egyptians were renowned for their learning, and from them the Greeks derived nearly all the elements of their knowledge.">—Id. p. 59.
"It is to Egypt that Pythagoras (a Grecian philosopher) owed his favorite doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of the soul.">—Rollin's Anc. Hist. Vol. 1. p. 141.
"The worship of Bacchus was brought out of Egypt to Rome.">—Id. p. 26.
Plato the renowned Grecian philosopher, the great advocate and expounder of this doctrine, received the first ideas from the Egyptian priests. "Plato Ægyptum peragravit ut a sacerdotibus Barbaris numeros et coelestis acciperet."—Cicero de Finibus. V. 25. Plato traveled through Egypt in order that he might learn from the barbarous priests, numbers and heavenly things. "The genius of Plato, informed by his own meditation, or by the traditional knowledge of the priests of Egypt," &c.—Gibbon.
"Egypt was ever counseled by all the ancients as the most renowned school for wisdom and politics, and the source from whence most arts and sciences were derived. This kingdom bestowed its noblest labors and finest arts on the improvement of mankind; and Greece was so sensible of this, that its most illustrious men, as Homer, Pythagoras, Plato; even its great legislators, Lycurgus and Solon, with many more whom it is needless to mention, traveled into Egypt to complete their studies, and draw from that fountain, whatever was most rare and valuable in every kind of learning.">—Rollin's Anc. Hist. Vol. 1. p. 136.
The priests were at one and the same time the depositaries of religion and the sciences; and to this circumstance was owing the great respect paid them by the natives as well as foreigners, by whom they were alike consulted upon the most sacred things relating to the mysteries of religion, and the most profound subjects in the several sciences.—Id. p. 141.
From this it is plain that the Greeks obtained many of their ideas, institutions, and doctrines from the Egyptians; and that among them was that of the immortality of the soul. Indeed, I believe that this is not denied by any one.
That Rome or the Catholic church received the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, purgatory, and eternal misery, &c., from the Greeks, is evident from the perfect similarity of the two systems. Between other nations who believe in the future existence of man, we find the greatest dissimilarity. Thus the Japanese10believe that the souls of the wicked transmigrate, after death, into the bodies of animals, and at last, in case of amendment, are translated back again into human bodies. Many of the Indian tribes believe that after death, they will be transported beyond the most distant mountains to inhabit a thousand islands filled with an abundance of game. The Gallas of Abyssinia entirely reject the idea of future punishment. Buddhism which numbers the most disciples of any religion on the globe, teaches that the "chief end of man," is to obtain "Nicban," or annihilation. The New Zealanders believe that the third day after the interment of a man, the heart separates itself from the corpse and is carried to the clouds. The Persians are said to leave one part of their graves open, from a belief that the dead will be reanimated and visited by angels who carry them to their future abodes.
Thus we see the greatest discord exists among nations on this point. But between Plato and the Catholic church and her daughters, there exists the greatest harmony. Let us make a few comparisons.
Plato represents Socrates as saying, "When the dead are arrived at the rendezvous of departed souls, whither their angels conduct them, they are all judged. Those who have passed their lives in a manner neither entirely criminal, nor absolutely innocent, are sent into a place where they suffer pains proportioned to their faults, till, being purged and cleansed of their guilt and afterwards restored to liberty, they receive the reward of the good actions they have done in the body.">—Rollin's Anc. Hist. Vol. iv.
"Those who are found guilty of crimes, great indeed, but worthy of pardon, who have committed violences, in the transports of rage, against their father or mother, or have killed some one in a like emotion, and afterwards repented—suffer punishment; but for a time only, till, by prayers and supplications, they have obtained pardon from those they have injured." Here is the doctrine of "purgatory" clearly stated, and doubtless all Protestants, as they have rejected this heathen tenet, will be ready to allow that this was the true origin of this doctrine.
Now read the same in the Catholic Catechism p. 111:
"Ques. Whither go such as die in venial sins, or not having fully satisfied for the temporal punishment due to their mortal sins which are forgiven them? Ans. To purgatory till they have made full satisfaction for them, and then to heaven."
How striking is the agreement of these two statements? so much so that they must both have come from the same source. But might not Plato have obtained this doctrine from the church? No! because he lived more than four-hundred years before Christ. Did he not obtain it from the Jews? No! because the Jews never held the doctrine of purgatory.
Socrates proceeds, "Those who are judged to be incurable, on account of the greatness of their crimes, the fatal Destiny that passes judgment upon them, hurls them into Tartarus, from whence they never depart."
Exchanging "Destiny" for "God," and "Tartarus" for "hell-fire," we have a familiar extract from a Catholic Catechism in a modern orthodox sermon!
"Question. What is mortal sin?
Ans. Any great offence against the law of God; and is so called because it kills the soul, and robs it of the spiritual life of grace.
Quest. Whither go such as die in mortal sin?
Ans. To hell for all eternity, as you have heard in the creed.">—Catholic Catechism. p. 111.
Such language is so common among orthodox Protestants that we need not quote any.
When Socrates was about to drink the fatal hemlock, "Crito, having asked him in what manner he wished to be buried, 'As you please,' said he 'if you can hold on me, and I do not escape out of your hands.' At the same time looking upon his friends with a smile, 'I can never persuade Crito,' says he, 'that Socrates is he who converses with you and disposes the several parts of his discourses; for he always imagines that I am what he is going to see dead in a little while. He confounds me with my carcass and therefore asks me how I would be buried.'"—Rollin's Anc. Hist. Vol. iv.
Now go and listen to an orthodox funeral sermon, as the eloquent minister consoles the mourning friends. Does he "comfort them with the words" that "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first?" O, no; it is after this fashion: "Dear friends, weep not for your daughter. Your loss is her eternal gain. This is not your Mary that you see before you; it is only the dust which she animated. Mary is now in heaven [Acts ii, 34] with the angels singing God's praises." [Ps. cxv, 17.]
However much we may wish to avoid the conclusion, we cannot fail to see that this language is only borrowed from the heathen philosopher.
But is there any historical proof that these pagan philosophers and teachers have been consulted by the church, on this and other theological questions? Yes; there is an abundance of it.
"In the second and third century the respectable name of Plato was used by the orthodox, and abused by the heretics, as the common support of truth and error; the authority of this skillful commentator, and the science of dialectics were employed to justify the remote consequences of his opinions and to supply the discreet silence of the inspired writers.">—Milman's Gibbon's Rome. Vol. ii. p. 309.
We are not left to guess that the writings of Plato have been studied and copied by so-called Christians; for it is a notorious fact that it has been done. Not only the writings of Plato were studied, but those of all the celebrated pagan teachers. "Lactantius, who has adorned the precepts of the gospel with the eloquence of Cicero; and Eusebius, who has consecrated the learning and philosophy of the Greeks to the service of religion; were both received into the friendship and familiarity of their sovereign (Constantine)."—Id. p. 268.
Submission.
"In your patience possess ye your souls."Luke xxi, 19.
Be still, my soul! the Lord is on thy side,
Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide,
In every change he faithful will remain:
Be still, my soul! thy best, thy heavenly Friend,
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul! thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as he hath the past:
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake,
All now mysterious shall be bright at last:
Be still, my soul! the winds and waves still know
His voice, who ruled them while he dwelt below.
Be still, my soul! when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know his love, his heart
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears:
Be still, my soul! thy Jesus can repay,
From his own fullness, all he takes away.
Be still, my soul! the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord;
When disappointment, grief, and fear, are gone,
Sorrow forgot, Love's purest joys restored:
Be still, my soul! when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
Be still, my soul! begin the song of praise
On earth, believing, to thy Lord on high;
Acknowledge him in all thy works and ways,
So shall he view thee with a well-pleased eye:
Be still, my soul! the Sun of Life divine
Thro' passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.
Prayer and the Heart's Iniquity
If I Regard Iniquity in my Heart, the Lord will Not Hear Me. Ps. lxvi, 18.
We often affront God by offering prayers which we are not willing to have answered. Theoretical piety is never more deceptive than in acts of devotion. We pray for blessings which we know to be accordant with God's will, and we persuade ourselves that we desire those blessings. In the abstract, we do desire them. A sane mind must be far gone in sympathy with devils, if it can help desiring all virtue in the abstract.
The dialect of prayer established in Christian usage, wins our trust; we sympathize with its theoretical significance; we find no fault with its intensity of spiritual life. It commends itself to our conscience and good sense, as being what the phraseology of devout affection should be. Ancient forms of prayer are beautiful, exceedingly. Their hallowed associations fascinate us like old songs. In certain imaginative moods, we fall into delicious reverie over them. Yet down deep in our heart of hearts, we may detect more of poetry than of piety in this fashion of joy. We are troubled, therefore, and our countenance is changed.
Many of the prime objects of prayer enchant us only in the distance. Brought near to us, and in concrete forms, and made to grow life-like in our conceptions, they very sensibly abate the pulse of our longing to possess them, because we cannot but discover that, to realize them in our lives, certain other daring objects must be sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to part with. The paradox is true to the life, that a man may even fear an answer to his prayers.
A very good devotee may be a very dishonest suppliant. When he leaves the height of meditative abstraction, and, as we very significantly say in our Saxon phrase, comes to himself, he may find that his true character, his real self, is that of no petitioner at all. His devotions have been dramatic. The sublimities of the closet have been but illusions. He has been acting a pantomime. He has not really desired that God would give heed to him, for any other purpose than to give him an hour of pleasurable devotional excitement. That his objects of prayer should actually be inwrought into his character, and should live in his own consciousness, is by no means the thing he has been thinking of, and is the last thing he is ready just now to wish for.
If he has a Christian heart buried up anywhere beneath this heap of pietism, it is very probable that the discovery of the burlesque of prayer of which he has been guilty, will transform his fit of romance into some sort of hypochondrial suffering. Despondency is the natural offspring of theatrical devotion.
Let us observe this paradox of Christian life in two or three illustrations.
An envious Christian—we must tolerate the contradiction; to be true to the facts of life, we must join strange opposites—an envious Christian prays, with becoming devoutness, that God will impart to him a generous, loving spirit, and a conscience void of offence to all men. His mind is in a solemn state, his heart is not insensible to the beauty of the virtues which he seeks. His posture is lowly, his tones sincere, and self-delusion is one of those processes of weakness which are facilitated by the deception of bodily habitude. His prayer goes on glibly, till conscience grows impatient, and reminds him of certain of his equals, whose prosperity stirs up within him that "envy which is the rottenness of the bones."
What then? Very probably, he quits that subject of prayer, and passes to another, on which his conscience is not so eagle-eyed. But after that glimpse of a hidden sin, how do the clouds of estrangement from God seem to shut him in, dark and damp and chill, and his prayer become like a dismal pattering of rain!
An ambitious Christian prays that God will bestow upon him a humble spirit. He volunteers to take a low place, because of his unworthiness. He asks that he may be delivered from pride and self-seeking. He repeats the prayer of the publican, and the benediction upon the poor in spirit. The whole group of the virtues kindred to humility, seem to him as radiant as the Graces with loveliness. He is sensible of no check in the fluency of his emotions, till his conscience, too, becomes angry, and dashes the little eddy of goodness which is just now covering up the undertone of selfishness that imperils his soul. If then he is not melted into tears at the disclosure of his heartlessness, that prayer probably ends in a clouded brow, and a feverish, spurious self-conflict.
A revengeful Christian prays that he may have a meek spirit; that he may be harmless as doves; that the synonymous graces of forbearance, long-suffering, patience, may adorn his life; that he may put away bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, with all malice; that that mind may be found in him which was also in Christ. At the moment of this devotional episode in his experience, he feels, as Rousseau did, the abstract grandeur of a magnanimity like that of Jesus. There is no doubt about the fervor of his theoretic love of such an ideal of character; and he is about to take courage from his rapture, when his conscience becomes impertinent, and mocks him, by thrusting upon his lips the words which are death to his conceit—"Forgive me as I forgive." If then he is not shocked into self-abhorrence at the ghastliness of his guilt, he probably exhausts that hour of prayer in palliations and compromises, or in reckless impositions upon the forbearance of God.
A luxurious Christian prays, in the good set phrases of devotion, for a spirit of self-denial; that he may endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ; that he may take up the cross and follow Christ; that he may be ready to forsake all that he hath, and be Christ's disciple; that he may not live unto himself; that he may imitate Him who went about doing good—who became poor that we might be rich, and who wept over lost souls. In such a prayer there may be, consciously, no insincerity, but a pleasurable sympathy, rather, with the grand thoughts and the grander feeling which the language portrays.
This lover of the pride of life does not discover his self-inflation, till conscience pricks him with such goads as these: "Are you living for the things you are praying for?" "What one thing are you doing for Christ which costs you self-denial?" "Are you seeking for opportunities to deny yourself to save souls?" "Are you willing to be like Him who had not where to lay his head?" "Can ye be baptized with the baptism that He is baptized with?" If then this effeminate one is not roused to a more Christ-like life by the uncovering of his hypocrisy, what a sickly murmuring of self-reproach11fills his heart at the collapse of that prayer!
Such is human nature; such, but by the grace of God, are we all. We must be dull inspectors of our own hearts, if we have never discerned there, lurking beneath the level at which sin breaks out into overt crime, some single offence—an offence of feeling, an offence of habit in thought, which for a time has spread its infection over the whole character of our devotions. We have been self-convicted of falsehood in prayer; for, though praying in the full dress of sound words, we did not desire that our supplications should be heard at the expense of that one idol.
Perhaps that single sin has woven itself like a web over large spaces of our life. It may have run like a shuttle to and fro in the texture of some plan of life, on which our conscience has not glared fiercely as upon a crime, because the usage of the world has blindfolded conscience by the respectability of such sin. Yet it has been all the while tightening its folds around us, repressing our liberty in prayer, stopping the life-blood and stiffening the fibre of our moral being, till we are like kneeling corpses in our worship.
That is a deceptive notion which attributes the want of unction in prayer to an arbitrary, or even inexplicable, withdrawment of God from the soul. Aside from the operation of physical causes, where is the warrant, in reason or revelation, for ascribing joylessness in prayer to any other cause than some wrong in the soul itself? What says an old prophet? “Behold the Lord’s ear is not heavy that it cannot hear. But your inquities have separated between you and your God. Your sins have hid his face from you. Therefore, we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places, as dead men.” Could words describe more truthfully, or explain more philosophically, that phenomenon of religious experience which we call the “hiding of God’s countenance?”
It does not require what the world pronounces a great sin, to break up the serenity of the soul in its devotional hours. The experience of prayer has delicate complications. A little thing, secreted there, may dislocate its mechanism and arrest its movement. The spirit of prayer is to the soul what the eye is to the body—the eye, so limpid in its nature, of such fine finish and such intricate convolution in its structure, and of so sensitive nerve, that the point of a needle may excruciate it, and make it weep itself away.
Even a doubtful principle of life, harbored in the heart, is perilous to the peacefulness of devotion. May not many of us find the cause of our joylessness in prayer, in the fact that we are living upon some unsuited principles of conduct? We are assuming the rectitude of courses of life, with which we are not ourselves honestly satisfied. I apprehend there is very much of suspense of conscience among Christians upon subjects of practical life, on which there is no suspense of action. Is there not a pretty large cloud-land covered by the usages of Christian society? And may not some of us find there the sin which infects our devotions with nauseous incense?
Possibly our hearts are shockingly deceitful in such iniquity. Are we strangers to an experience like this—that when we mourn over our cold prayers as a misfortune, we evade a search of that disputed territory for the cause of them, through fear that we shall find it there, and we struggle to satisfy ourselves with an increase of spiritual duties which shall cost us no sacrifice? Are we never sensible of resisting the ideas which the Holy Spirit gives us in parables, by refusing to look that way for the secret of our deadness—saying, “Not that! Oh no, not that! But let us pray more?”
Many a doubtful principle in a Christian mind, if once set in the focus of a conscience illumined by the Holy Spirit, would resolve itself into a sin, for which that Christian would turn and look up guiltily to the Master, and then go out and weep bitterly.
A Truth
A TRUTH.—If a man but glance once over his yesterday, he will at once see how foolish it is to fret oneself about the time to come; for he will find in every yesterday a miniature grave, as it were, dug by a too fearful imagination, in which is buried all his little store of daily happiness. Men slight the good they have, in their anxiety for the good to come. They waste their oil for to-day, in fruitless attempts to procure a supply for the morrow, forgetting that he who replenishes the cruse is inexhaustible.
Selected for the Review.
Eating and Sleeping.
By W. T. Vail, M. D.
BY W. T. VAIL, M. D.
THERE is an old adage, and a good one, borrowed, we believe, from the writings of St. Paul, that "if any would not work, neither should he eat." Were this very rational commandment of the great disciple generally enforced in these latter days, we apprehend it would make the greatest stir among lazy-bones the world ever saw, and create one of the greatest revolutions known to modern society.
The above maxim may, we suppose, be considered both a principle in morals, and a law of the animal economy; but there is another principle more imperatively a law of the animal economy than this, whatever it may be considered in morals, and which deserves to be written in letters of gold, and posted in every household, study, counting-room, and office, as one of the every-day guiding maxims for all human life. It is this, that if any do not sleep, neither should he eat; or, in other words, paraphrasing the maxim, there should be an exact ratio between the eating and sleeping of every individual, in order to preserve a proper equilibrium and healthful balance of the physical organism.
The point we make we do not remember to have seen descanted upon, nor elucidated, by any writer upon physiology or hygiene, in this journal, nor any other, yet so thoroughly persuaded are we of its importance that we do not hesitate to say, that upon examination it will be found a key to the origin of one of the largest class of most distressing and obstinate disorders.
No human constitution can stand an unremitting exercise of the brain and nervous system, day and night, for any length of time, or any considerable approach to such an exercise, without breaking down and running into monstrous disorder. No human constitution is capable of performing the functions of digestion and nutrition in a healthful and life-sustaining manner, unless its energies are regularly and perfectly renovated by rest and sleep. Nothing so impairs the digestive and nutritive functions, nor diminishes their power more certainly and rapidly than a loss of sleep; and nothing more surely hinders the return of perfect sleep and rest than full or over-feeding, under circumstances of nervous excitement or mental exhaustion.
The most difficult cases to treat successfully, that ever came under our care at the "Granite State," are those patients who, for years, have been racking their brains incessantly with cares or business, have been eating heartily to sustain the draft upon their systems, and have been lying awake nights, thinking. Such a course runs the unhappy individual into the most confirmed and disastrous state of nervous dyspepsia, a dyspepsia that leads directly to monomania or insanity.
Let the business man, let the student, let the professional man, let every man, who finds his accustomed period of sleep, say of six hours or of five hours daily, reduced to half this measure or less, beware how he eats. Reduce the food at once in proportion to the reduced sleep, if you would save serious disorder of the organism and secure a rapid return to health; that is, to the accustomed quiet and sleep. What shall be done, then, some one may ask me, in case we do not sleep at all? Shall we, in that case, cease to eat altogether? Where there is a complete loss of sleep for any reason, let me answer there is no remedy so good as entire fasting. Sleeping before eating is the grand rule, which might be called the golden rule for the guidance of the whole human family.
But the business man rushes headlong, too often, toward a yawning gulf of destruction. He over-works himself to-day, his appetite is, in consequence, stimulated; he eats largely, and to-night he loses half his accustomed sleep, and the other half is but poor and disturbed. To-morrow, forgetting all things else, he plunges again into the labyrinths of business. There are herculean difficulties to be grappled with and overcome in his pursuit after wealth, or in the successful management of his affairs. Again, he eats largely to supply the great demand made upon his system, and, most likely, swallows his food rapidly. Again, his sleep is broken and disturbed, no better than the night before, most likely worse. Now, what is to be done? Why, what is generally done, is to go over with the some old thing again—over-work, and again over-eat; but sleep! Can a poor, over-worked brain, and over-taxed digestive organism, sleep? There is commotion in the house. The various members of the family are agitated and calling out one to the other. Can there be any sleep? The brain calls out to the stomach to know what it is doing down there, to know what's the reason it don't keep quiet. The stomach answers back to know what's the reason, after being required, unassisted, to do work enough for two or three members of the house all day, it should not have a chance to finish up by night, and get the house to rights, even though it be a little late. The heart flutters away, because the stomach and the brain, in their agitation, have forgotten to lend their accustomed aid. So the good man of the house wakes in the morning—no, he don't wake, but he gets up—utterly confounded and half crazy.
But a good cup of strong coffee, with beefsteak, "sets him up" again after a little, and again he engages in the anxious strife of worldly pursuits. Now, how long will a poor, frail, human machine made up of flesh and blood, of bone and muscle, stand such irrational and absurd treatment.
Can a poor, crazy, insane body, long remain inhabited by a sane and healthy mind? Does any one want a recipe for mental insanity? He can have it in anything that makes the body crazy most rapidly and most thoroughly. So the student pores over his books by day and by night. He has lately come from the field or the workshop. His appetite is good. He eats heartily. But before long he does not sleep as well as he used to. The horrors of dyspepsia follow. He studies still. He is ambitious to excel. He knows that the path to influence, to honor, to wealth, lies straight through a thorough education. He has set his heart upon excellence and distinction. He means to be no common man. Poor, deluded mortal! There is a grave in the pathway he is traveling, open to receive him. Is there no one to tell him? Are none of his friends acquainted with the road? Why can he not be induced to change his course a little?
The road he is treading is a long one, and he must sleep by the way and have his regular rest, or he never will have strength to attain the golden summit to which he aspires. Thousands lie buried along that road. They perished mostly for want of rest. Thousands more are lying crippled and wrecked all along the passage. They over-worked and over-ate; sleep came not to their eyes, nor slumber to their eyelids, and they sank by the way. Our friend will fall into the same pit, and thousands more will follow him.
The picture is capable of infinite variation and expansion. But a faint outline of it can be drawn in a single article. The man who sleeps largely can eat largely. The man who sleeps little must eat less. Poor sleepers, alas! what trials do they not endure? what sufferings are they not destined to bear? And what an army of these poor, miserable unfortunates there are in the world, who are anxiously seeking for some pill or powder, some nervine or narcotic, that will give them the long-desired and most coveted of all things, "a good night's rest!" I have a recipe for all such poor mortals, worth a thousand dollars, which I offer in this number of the Herald free, and which may be the means of saving many a valuable life, and of bringing health and joy to many a sad and forlorn countenance. It is, Sleep first, and eat afterward. Make the amount of the latter correspond with the amount of the former.—Herald of Health.
Pungent Reply
PUNGENT REPLY.—To a young infidel who scoffed at Christianity because of the misconduct of some of its professors, Dr. Mason said, “Did you ever know an uproar to be made because an infidel went astray from the path of morality?” The infidel admitted that he had not. The doctor added, “Then, don’t you see that you admit that Christianity is a holy religion, by expecting its professors to be holy; and that you pay it the highest compliment in your power?”