Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/124

104 material, consisting of all the variety of material meats and drinks. Let me further call to your recollection, that bodily mastication, or chewing, consists in mincing the food, or grinding it into minute parts, that so it may be capable of being swallowed, and thus received into the body, which it could never be until it was so minced and ground. And cannot you now discern, that a similar act of mincing and grinding takes place in the mind at the time of its reception of its meat, and that without such mincing and grinding the meat could never be received into the mind? For what think you of the intellectual act of meditation, consideration, or serious thought? The mental meat to be received is, for instance, the good of the love of and of our neighbour; but how is it possible for you to receive this  into your mind and life, whilst you view it in the gross only, or under a general idea, without ever being at the pains to particularise it, so as to see distinctly and minutely all its several qualities, characters, properties, privileges, &c.? As well might you attempt to swallow a whole loaf of bread without first chewing it, as to admit this good, this spiritual loaf of immortal bread, into the inward recesses of your spirit, so long as it remains a loaf, unbroken and unminced by devout reflection on its origin and on its peculiar marks of distinction from all other bread! For consider, what