Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/117

Rh Like every other bodily act, it originates not in the body but in the mind; and was intended to excite the recollection of its origin, and at the same time, a view of that spiritual and immortal food on which the mind was designed to feed, and for which it principally prays when it expresses itself in the Divine language of devotion, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Bodily appetite therefore, in the case of man, is not a mere animal impulse, because it is in connection with that more elevated and interior impulse of heavenly affection, operative in every human being, which hungers and thirsts after the meat which endureth to everlasting life. For the same reason, bodily eating and drinking differs essentially, with man, from the same act as performed by the inferior animals, inasmuch as with man it is an ultimate figure of the reception of incorruptible food, or of all those living principles of heavenly love and wisdom, called the and  of the, by virtue of which man is admitted to the high privilege of dwelling in that , and of having that  dwell in him, [John vi. 56.]. Every time, therefore, that we take our daily bodily refreshment of meat and drink, if the ears of our minds were opened, we should hear a voice from above calling us to the participation of menial refreshment; and if we would obey this voice,