we now have shall have remained long enough where it is, to become too old and need changing, it is taken up by particles into these hairlike vessels; the vessel contracts behind the particle and pushes it on the skin, and much of the body is lost in one day by what is called insensible perspiration. Others of these vessels lead in a different direction, and taking up particle after particle of the old body, it is thrown into the bowels, and so passes off. But from where these particles are taken there is left a vacancy of course, and if not supplied, the man is said to be falling away, or declining in flesh. Our food, day after day, is taken into the stomach, there prepared, taken up in particles by these small vessels, conducted to every part of the body, and deposited in these vacar cies. Thus we think that any one can understand the necessity of daily food, and the wonderful process by which our sinking flesh is constantly sustained. But the inquiring mind sometimes demands, "If my body is thus totally changed, and so often, how is it that I look as I formerly did, or retain my shape in any way?" Answer: This you shall understand if you are willing to think industriously. Take a plate and cover it over with apples On the top of this first layer of apples place a second, and on these a third, and so continue; after a time you will have a pyramid, and one to crown the top alone. Then suppose one man approaches the plate, takes up an apple and throws it to a distance. Another man by, immediately drops another apple as large into its place; your pyramid is still there, and retains its shape. The first man takes up apple after apple in

swift succession, casting them to a distance, while the second man drops an apple into each vacuum as fast as they are made: your plate of apples may be changed a thousand times, and the pyramid is still there in full shape. Thus your body is changed and renewed by particles. The shape remains, although there is nothing about you, soul excepted, which was there in former years. It is a man's immortal part which constitutes his real identity. Blessed be God, the soul does not waste, and glory to his name, the body does; thus leading us to remember our dependence on our heavenly Father.

Fourth fact. We never had a body, a part of which did not come from every corner of the world. The rice of which that man is partaking grew in Georgia or the East Indies. That waterfowl once swam on the surface of a northern lake. That sugar came from Jamaica, and that fish once floated on the Newfoundland shoals. Young reader, do you expect to live a few months longer? If you do, you must have in part a new body; and where is it to come from? It is probable that you will eat bread; but the wheat from which this is to be made is now growing in your father's field, or in that of a neighbor. How is the growth of this wheat to be continued? Plants are sustained and nourished much from the air that floats past them; it enters into the pores, the leaves drink it up, and it forms a part of their substance. But the air of the earth is always changing and streaming in torrents from one part of the earth to the other. This incessant motion is necessary to preserve its purity. The air which is

to sustain that grain on which you are to feed, is not near it now; it is on the other side of the earth. Vegetation is fed by the showers of heaven. Water forms a part of the wheat, an indispensable portion. But that water is not over the field now. The clouds come from a distance. The process of evaporation will proceed on the surface of distant oceans, if the atmosphere is made heavy with the showers that nourish that which is to nourish you. You never partook of any food, part of which had not been collected from distant lands and oceans all over the earth.

APPLICATION. Here is a man who is acquainted with all these facts. He knows that the body he is to have, if he lives, is now diffused and commingled through all the elements of earth, air, and water; but his belief is, that when he dies, if his body should go back into these elements, and be scattered abroad once more, God cannot collect it again.

Well might heaven mourn, earth be astonished, and hell rejoice. I never could have believed this, if I had not seen and heard it. That scientific man is fully aware that for the twentieth time he has had a body gathered from the corners of the world; but his prop for eternity is, that God cannot do this once more on the morning of the resurrection. The fabric of his everlasting expectations rests on the creed, or the hope, that the Creator, who has given this other man fifty new bodies, will fail in the fiftyfirst effort, should he endeavor out of all these bodies to gather one new frame.

If this system or religious creed is not the result of man's disrelish for truth, and his love for darkness, then is there no such thing as cause and result. My dear friends, 1 do not envy you your tower of refuge. Be not angry with me if I prefer the Rock of ages for my security when the world reels.

CHAPTER XIX.

MEN HAVE LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT.

CASE 3. A noted teacher of Latin who had read the Bible, and who had read many volumes of history, averred that he could not receive the New Testament: "For," said he, "the enemies of Christianity, pagan writers, would surely have noticed Christ and his apostles, or their writings, or their miracles if they had been performed."

This objection was the ground of his creed, the pillar of his confidence. It has been such to thousands, and continues so to be.

To show the strength of these objections, we will look at similar cavils in matters of common history. Suppose you were to meet an impetuous and loudtalking young man, who had taken up some strange dislike to the occurrences of the American revolution. With flashing eye and indignant action, he declares that he does not believe one half of the statements of our historians. One of his most prominent difficulties and strongest objections he presents in the following way: "I never can believe that Lord Cornwallis marched his forces through Virginia. This is Washington's native state, and he would certainly have opposed them had the enemy crossed its border. The British troops never could have been in Virginia; common-sense tells me so; because, had they appeared there, we are certain, from what we know of