If one desires to appear "intellectual", or to impress others with one's "spirituality",

there is sometimes a temptation to decry the body. This, however, has no scriptural

warrant. The Apostle may bemoan the fact that in his flesh dwelt no good thing, and that

he was conscious of a law of sin working in his members, but "the flesh" and "the law of

sin" must not be confused with the body itself and its functions. The same epistle

(Romans) enjoins the believer to "yield" his members to the service of the Lord, and to

"present" his body as a living sacrifice.

In the last article we occupied all our space in endeavouring to give some idea of what

is implied in the record of man's creation from the dust of the ground. In the present

article, we propose to look, not at the body itself, but at the body as an organ apart from

which the processes of thought would never receive impetus to commence, and if started,

would have no material with which to work. The body plays a far more important part in

the development of the mind and in the functioning of the will than at first sight appears.

We distinguish mind from matter by its qualities. Matter may be measured, frozen,

attracted by gravity, etc., while mind cannot. Nevertheless, though mind and matter are

quite distinct, mind needs matter for the materials of its thought processes, and it needs

the organized material of the body to set these processes going. Whatever properties and

powers the mind may possess, they remain inert until set in motion, as it were, by the

sensations experienced by the body through the medium of the senses. Let us, then, seek

to understand a little about this ladder, which, while resting upon the solid basis of

sensation, rises up until its top is in the clouds. We shall not, or course, attempt in an

article of this length to follow the whole process and progress of thought. If we can see

something of the first few steps, and establish the connection that must exist between the

body with its senses and the thought processes and the will, we shall have accomplished

all that is necessary for our present purpose.

The senses are five in number--touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. The sense of

taste is limited to the papillae on the surface of the tongue, and it is, of course, necessary

that actual contact should be made with the object tasted. The sense of smell, is confined

to the olfactory nerves which have their termination in the nostrils. While the necessity

for contact is not so obvious here as in the case of taste, yet contact there must be, for if

any substance which has a definite odour be sealed up in a glass case the sense of smell is

unaffected. The sense of hearing is dependent upon a pair of organs so placed that the

vibrations of the air shall not only register upon the drum and be conveyed by a

marvelous mechanism to the brain, but a sense also of direction is included, so that the

head is turned until not only is the sound heard, but the direction from which it comes is

gauged. The sense of sight is dependent upon another pair of organs which register the