Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/101

Rh objects; and affording, at the same time, the most convincing proof, that the sensation of touch, in all its degrees, hath its sole origin in the mercy and loving kindness of that ? By virtue then of the organ of mental touch (whether we be aware of it or not), we are all of us in the same interesting situation with that distempered woman of old, of whom it is written, that she “came behind her , (when sojourning here on earth), and touched the hem of His garment: For she said within herself if I may but touch the hem of His garment, I shall be whole,” [Matt. ix. 20, 21.; Mark v. 25.; Luke viii. 43.]. Most affecting and awful consideration!

But I hasten to the contemplation of another spiritual and eternal use of the organ of bodily touch, as resulting from the second view under which it is presented to our notice, viz. as a medium of communication between the great world of outward nature and the little world of the human body.

This wonderful mediating faculty of the organ of bodily touch, it has been already seen, is manifested in its power to admit from the air and æther the purer and more wholesome elements which are suited to the natural state of the body; and on the other hand, to let out, and to disperse into the contiguous atmosphere, collections of effluvia no longer serviceable to the body,