Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/100

80 interesting are its spiritual and eternal benefits in regard to the mind, or spirit, of man, by reminding him of that higher and interior mental touch with which he is endowed, and by virtue of which he possesses an internal feeling, extending itself, not only to things merely speculative and intellectual, which relate to the present life, but to those more substantial concerns of another world, on which his everlasting happiness or misery depends! Yet that such an internal feeling exists in every human mind, is evident from experience, and is moreover confirmed by the general application of the term touch to express such feeling,—as may be seen by consulting the best writers in our English language. The organ then of bodily touch, it is plain, is in connection with the higher organs of mental touch, being at once their basis, their support, their monitor, and their representative figure; and thus extending its beneficial operations, from the lowest and most minute objects of outward nature, to the very throne of heaven, and to that who is seated upon it. For what human mind hath not some feeling, either consolatory or otherwise, respecting that ? What human mind, too, cannot touch that as often as it is so disposed, and by that touch be made sensible of a consolation, infinitely surpassing all the transitory delights resulting from the touch of lower