Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/123

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OF EATING AND DRINKING.
103

as the act of chewing food. But allow me to remind you, that this act, trifling and insignificant as it may appear, is yet thought worthy to be noticed in the Volume of Revelation, where you will find it recorded, under the name of chewing the cud, as a mark and character by which a clean animal is to be distinguished from an unclean one, [see Levit. xi. 3 to 9.; Deut. xiv. 6 to 9.], And can we conceive that the ALMIGHTY Himself would have noted such a bodily act, and dignified it as such a sign, unless, it had involved in it some higher and more interior meaning than what relates to the body? Rather, are not we compelled to believe, that all the words of GOD, as being SPIRIT and LIFE, [John vi. 63.], were intended to convey spiritual and living ideas; and that, consequently, chewing the cud is an act which relates to the mind as well as to the body, since no other chewing can be supposed to be either a spiritual or living act, or to suggest a spiritual and living idea?

Are you still at a loss to comprehend how the act of chewing can have any reference to the mind? Let me call to your recollection then, what hath been already noted, that the mind has its food as well as the body, with this only difference, that the food of the mind is spiritual, consisting of all the various principles of goodness and truth; whereas the food of the body is