Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/121

Rh I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come to him, and sup with him, and he with ,” [Rev. iii. 20.]. Are you surprised at hearing, that the reception of bodily food on the part of man has such an extended and sublime end? Look only with a humble and grateful heart to in His, on every occasion of such reception, and you will soon be convinced, to your inexpressible joy that, howsoever surprising such an end may be, it is nevertheless the holy and blessed end which  has appointed for the eternal happiness of His creature man.

But it is time to hasten from the consideration of the ends of eating and drinking to contemplate the means by which those ends are accomplished. Allow me then to detain you, for a moment, on this interesting subject.

These means are included in the two important and significant acts of mastication and deglutition; the former, viz. mastication, consisting in the chewing or mincing the solid food which is received into the mouth; and the latter, viz. deglutition, consisting in the swallowing, or letting down into the stomach, through the œsophagus, what is so chewed or minced, that so it may be incorporated in the bodily frame.