Chapter V: The Romance of Axel 305 (5)

Men may object to it, of course—men object to everything. I remember a gentleman on the Hudson who took a querulous Englishman—not a Canadian, [laughter]—who had been finding fault with everything from the constitution of our government down to the shape of the toes of our shoes, out to see from his place the magnificent autumnal forests on the other side of the river, and the forests on the Hudson at this season of the year are as if thousands of rainbows had fallen to the earth and lodged. Said he, “Isn’t that magnificent?” “Well, yes, that is—yes, that is very fine; but don’t you think now that it is just a little tawdry, perhaps?” [Laughter.] There is nothing men may not object to in the works or in the word of God, if their hearts set them in that direction. No matter for the objection! The Gospel of Christ, instinct with power, coming from the heart, coming on the earnest word of him who believes it, goes through objections as the cannon ball goes through mists. Do not let us doubt or fear concerning its success, if we hold it as the fathers held it. Men object to the atonement; why, it has been the life of so many millions of human hearts that the multitudes on high are now uncounted and incomputable. They object to the doctrine of regeneration; that is the doctrine which more than any other exalts man’s nature, showing the royalty of it, the greatness of it, its possibilities, and the glory of its future.

Of course men may object. Do not let us be disturbed; but always remember that, with the word of God within us and the power and providence of God behind us, and the spirit of God going before us to open ways for our progress, victory is sure. Christ seemed insane in his aim at the beginning. Speaking a few words orally to his disciples; writing no line unless he wrote one on the sand; only uttering his thought in syllables that seemed dissipated in the air, and aiming by that to conquer the world to his truth,—it seemed like expecting the whistle of a boy in these mountain valleys to go reverberating as thunder over all the earth in all the centuries. But he did it. It seemed insane to undertake to build a kingdom by gathering a few scattered followers here and there, and especially a small nucleus of obscure and uneducated men bound together by nothing but the simple sacrament of eating bread and drinking wine in memory of him,—without saint or standard or army or treasure or navy or counselors or forum,—it seemed like building another Lebanon with shovelfuls of sand, or building another Jerusalem with charred sticks and straws. But he did it. His kingdom already is in all the earth. The proudest empire which sets itself against it, shivers in the contact. Napoleon saw this on the Island of St. Helena. Comparing himself as a man ruling in the world with Christ as a Godlike person, said he, “He is God and not man.” He has done the work thus far; he is to do it in the future, if you and I adhere to the gospel, if from all our pulpits reverberate the echoes of this great meeting, if the force which is here assembled goes forth to testify of that system of religion of which God is the centre and head, which has its grandest trophy and symbol in the cross of Christ, and which opens the vast and near eternity to the apprehension of every soul conscious of unconfessed sins, and to the desiring and exulting hope of every soul that has found rest in Christ—the gospel that is to fill the world at last.

I remember when a lad, forty years ago last spring, coming for the first time into this beautiful Portland harbor from Boston by the boat. The night was windy and rough. The cabin was confined, the boat was small; and very early in the morning I went up on deck. There was nothing but the blue waste around, dark and threatening, and the clouded heavens above. At last suddenly on the horizon flashed a light, and then after a little while another, and then a little later another still, from the light-houses along the coast; and at last the light at the entrance of this harbor became visible just as “the fingers of the dawn” were rushing up into the sky. As we swept around into the harbor the sunrise gun was fired from the cutter or corvette lying in the harbor, the band struck up a martial and inspiring air, the great splendor of the rising sun flooded the whole view, and every window-pane on these hills, as seen from the boat, seemed to be a plate of burnished gold let down from the celestial realms.

Ah! my friends, we are drawing nearer to the glory of the latter day. I have thought of that vision often. I thought of it then in my early carelessness, as representing what might be conceived of the entrance into heaven. I have thought of it as I have stood by the bed of the dying and seen their faces flush and flash in a radiance that I could not apprehend. I have thought of it this week as I have been in these meetings. The lights are brightening along the coast; the darkness is disappearing; the harbor is not far off; the Sun of Righteousness is to arise in all the earth, and the golden glory of the new Jerusalem is to be established here. Let it be ours in that great day to remember that we held the faith, we triumphed by the Cross, we stood with Paul and with the Son of God, taking God’s revelation for our inspiration and doing our work under that mighty impulse.

And unto God be all the praise. [Great applause.]

FOOTNOTE:

[H] An address recently delivered in Portland, Me.

ADVANTAGE OF WARM CLOTHING.

[Concluded.]

Now the clear, transparent air permits heat to be shot off, or rayed through it with great freedom. But it does not readily receive heat “by conveyance,” so long as it is still. If you put your hand into still air which is as cold as a cold metal knob, you do not know that the air is so chill as the metal, because it does not make your hand so cold. The heat is not conveyed away from your hand as quickly. When air is _moving_, instead of being still, the case is, however, altogether altered. A current of air, or wind, carries away heat from warm bodies very quickly as it blows over them. It does so because each fresh little particle of air which is pressed against them, receives its own share of the heat, and conveys it away, leaving fresh particles to come up in their turn, and do the same thing. A pint of boiling water in a metal pot placed in a strong wind having fifty degrees of heat, would lose all its excess of heat as soon again as it would if standing in still air having the same warmth. The old plan of cooling hot tea or broth by blowing it, is correct in principle, though not in accordance with good taste.

The laboratory of the living animal body has the supply of its fuel, and the capacity of its air-blasts, so arranged that just about as much heat is supplied through its internal furnace, as is lost from its surface by “raying off” and “conveyance,” when the surrounding air has a warmth of sixty degrees of the heat scale, and when its surface is somewhat protected by a light covering of clothing, to lessen the rapidity with which the heat is shot off and conveyed away. The heat is then produced as rapidly in the internal furnace, as it is thrown off from the outer surface, and the consequence is that the animal _feels comfortably warm_. It only feels uncomfortably _hot_, when more heat is produced in the furnace of the living laboratory than can be scattered through its surface. And it only feels uncomfortably _cold_ when more heat is scattered from the surface than can be kept up through the burning of the inner furnace.

But in winter time the cold external air carries away heat much more quickly from the surface of living animals, than the warmer external air does in summer time. Here, then, is a little difficulty to be met, if the warmth of the body is to be kept precisely the same in both seasons. It is requisite that it should be always maintained at the same point, because that point is the one which is most suitable for the operations which are being carried on in the vessels and chambers of its laboratory. Nature has two distinct ways in which she insures this end.

In the first place, are you not aware that you get more hungry in winter than you do in summer time? All living animals have pretty much the same experience as yourself in this particular, and the reason is that nature intends, during the cold season, to have more fuel introduced into the supply-pipes of the body for the warming of its structures. The furnace of the laboratory gets quickened in a small degree; its slow fires are fanned into slightly increased activity, more fuel is burned, and so more heat is generated to meet the greater demand for it, dependent on the influence of the external cold.

But nature also thickens the clothing of animals during the cold season, and so affords increased obstruction, through which the escaping heat has to force its way. Have you not observed the sleek silky coat which the horse wears through the summer, and then noticed at the beginning of winter how this sleek coat is exchanged for a thick, fuzzy shag, that looks more like wool than hair? The warm winter coat economizes the heat produced in the furnace of the living body, and keeps it from being scattered to waste as quickly as it is through the sleek summer coat. This is nature’s other plan of meeting the difficulty brought about by the changing temperature of the air. Nearly all animals belonging to temperate and cold climates have this change of apparel provided for them in spring and autumn, but in some cases the change is rendered very striking in consequence of a summer garment of bright gay colors being replaced by a winter one of pure and spotless white. The fierce tyrant of the ice land himself, the polar bear, has a dingy yellow coat during the summer, but puts on furs as snowy as his own realms when once the summer sun has disappeared. These white winter furs are always warmer than dark ones. Birds which do not migrate to warmer regions of the earth in the cold season, have winter and summer suits of apparel, just in the same way as quadrupeds. In the winter a lining of the thick, soft white down is added beneath the outer feathers. There is one little bird which comes to England in the late autumn, driven there by the still greater cold further north, and which is familiarly known as having two remarkably different costumes for his English and his foreign residence. In England the snow-bunting appears with a white body and tail, but abroad and in summer time he is distinguished by a brilliant black tail and back, and a body and head of pure white.

Man follows the example which nature has set before him, in the matter of clothing. He prepares himself stout warm garments for winter time, and thin cool ones for the summer; and not only this; in the hottest regions of the earth, where there is most sunshine, he commonly goes nearly naked, while in the coldest regions, near the poles, he puts on the heaviest and warmest woolens and furs that he can procure. Now this is one reason why man has been _apparently_ so uncared for by nature in the particular of clothing. The seeming indifference and carelessness is really consideration of the highest kind. All the different races of the lower animals have their own narrow tracts assigned them for their residence. In these tracts there is no very extreme diversity of temperature, and provision is therefore easily made to adapt their clothing to it just so far as is required. The human race, on the other hand, is intended to cover the entire earth, and to subdue it; to spread itself from the burning tropics to the frigid poles. The heat which has to be borne in the tropics, is as much greater than that which is experienced near the poles in winter time, as boiling water is hotter than ice. At the poles, one hundred degrees of frost often occur. In India, there are occasionally one hundred and thirty degrees of heat under the canvas of tents. It therefore becomes an affair of almost absolute necessity, that the skin of the widely scattered lords of creation should be as unencumbered as possible, and that warm clothing should have to be prepared and added as a covering whenever circumstances call for its use. The head only, of the human being, has a natural fur garment. This part of the body is covered with hair, because the most delicate portion of the entire frame, the brain, is contained within it. The skull is protected by hair, that the brain may not be hurt by too sudden a change from cold to heat, or from heat to cold.

There is another advantage attending upon the arrangement which has left human beings dependent upon an artificial supply of clothing, and which has ordained that they shall come into the world with naked skins. In consequence of this arrangement it is very easy to secure that amount of cleanliness which is necessary for the preservation of the health of such delicately framed creatures. The artificial clothes can be altogether changed at will, and they can be washed and aired, as they never could be if they were inseparably attached to the skin. Then, too, they can be removed from the skin in the early morning, or at convenient intervals, and its surface can be thoroughly cleansed and purified by bathing with water. Just think of the difference of going into a bath of refreshing water unencumbered by clothes, and of doing the same with thick, dabby garments clinging about you, and having to shake yourselves like great Newfoundland dogs when you come out; and also recall to mind the pleasure you experience every time you change soiled linen for clean, and you will become sensible of how much you owe to beneficent nature for having left you destitute of the feathers of the bird, or the fur of the bear. The extreme importance of making a fair use of this privilege has been already alluded to in its proper place.

But nature has effected yet another very bountiful provision for the comfort and safety of her tender charge, the living human animal. Even when only covered by very light clothing, it is possible human beings may be placed in air which is so warm, that heat is not carried off from their bodies so fast as it is produced in the interior furnace. In India, it sometimes happens that the air gets to be even hotter than the living body. All movement of the air, then, heats, rather than cools. Under such circumstances, nature adopts a very effectual course to prevent warmth from collecting more and more in the frame, until a disagreeable and injurious amount has been reached. Having first reduced the supply of fuel to the smallest limits consistent with keeping the fire going, by lessening the appetite, and by taking away the craving for heating food, and having given a hint to adopt such outer coverings for the body as are as little obstructive of the passage of heat as possible, the heat drenches the surface of the frame abundantly with moisture, which has the power to cool by its ready evaporation. Take a small piece of wet linen and lay it upon your forehead, or upon your arm, leaving it freely exposed to the air, and you will find, that as the moisture evaporates from the linen, your skin underneath will feel colder and colder. The heat of the skin is used up in converting the moisture of the linen into steam, exactly as the heat of a fire is used up in converting the water of a kettle into steam when this is made to boil. The steam flies away with the warmth of the skin very rapidly, and consequently the skin soon comes to feel cold. Now, when the body gets to be very warm, and the over-heated blood is rapidly pouring through the channels of its supply pipes, then the three millions of little holes or pores, which lie upon its surface, are opened, and floods of vapor and water are poured through them, producing just the same kind of effect as wet linen would do. This action is termed “perspiration,” or a “steaming through” the pores of the skin. The breathing blows up, or fans the slow furnace contained within the living animal frame, and so heats it above the surrounding air. The perspiration carries away portions of this heat when it has been raised too high, and so cools the heated body down. Some moisture also escapes as steam from the lungs and through the mouth in breathing, thus assisting the perspiring skin in its office of diminishing the excessive warmth of the body. You have often seen dogs, which have been heated by running, pant with opened mouths and outstretched tongues, the vapor steaming forth from their gaping throats. Dogs cool themselves in this way because they have very little perspiration passing through their skins. Their perspiration is really from their throats, rather than from their skins. Human beings sometimes lose, in hot weather, as much as five pints of water in twenty-four hours, by exhalation through the lungs and skin.

Give me now, good reader, your close attention for just a few minutes while I return to the notion with which we started on beginning the consideration of this subject, so that I may fit it into its right place, and leave it well packed away with the other notions that we have gained, while studying the value and uses of air, water, and food. Your body is a living laboratory, formed of an enormous quantity of little chambers and vessels. From a strong central force-pump, placed in the middle of that laboratory, liquefied food, or blood, is streamed out through branching supply-pipes to the several chambers, to carry to them the materials that have to be operated upon in their cavities for the production of animal power and warmth. The force-pump acts by repeated short strokes, but the liquefied food flows through chambers of the laboratory in continuous, even currents, because the supply-pipes are made of yielding and elastic substance, like India-rubber, and not of hard, stiff substance, like metal or wood. As the liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump, the elastic walls of the supply-pipes are stretched by the gush, but directly afterwards they shrink back again, as India-rubber would do, shut close a valve that prevents all return of the liquid into the force-pump, and so compel the liquid to run onwards in the other direction, through the pipes. Before the shrinking in of the pipes has altogether ended, the force-pump renews its stroke, and so the onward flow of the liquid never stays, although the pump has to make beat after beat. The liquefied food gushes out from the force-pump with a speed of about a foot in each second; but it has to supply such an enormous host of small chambers in the remote parts of the laboratory, that it does not flow through them with a speed greater than an inch in a minute. This, however, is no disadvantage, as it affords plenty of time for the full carrying out of all the intended changes in those chambers, whereby animal power and warmth are to be produced.

Remember, then, that as your heart beats in your chest, second after second, the red blood flushes through every crevice and every fibre of your living frame, just as it does through your cheek when it is crimsoned with a blush. Seventy or eighty times every minute, your beating heart pumps, and constantly, so long as you are alive, the flushing blood streams on everywhere. The blood, however, streams on in this continuous way, because its flow is not stopped, even when it has reached the remotest chambers and fibers. The trunks of the supply-pipes divide into branching twigs, which get very fine indeed where they are in connection with the working chambers of the laboratory, and which then lead on into return-pipes, that are gathered together into enlarging trunks, These, in their turn, are collected into main tubes which end in the cavity of the heart. At the extremity of these main trunks of the return-pipes, valves are so placed as to prevent the pumping action of the heart from forcing the blood back into them. Thus, as your heart pumps, swelling out and drawing in its walls, the blood flows into its cavity by the return-pipes, and is squeezed out therefrom through the supply-pipes. It always streams in one direction. It circulates through the living frame which it flushes; that is, it goes in an endless circle, now through the heart, now through the supply-pipes, now through the return-pipes, and now starts once again through the heart.

But as your blood thus circulates, through your living frame, fresh nourishment, newly dissolved food, is added in some places to its streams; in other places nourishment and fuel are taken from it to furnish the active chambers of the laboratory with warmth and power; in other places worn-out substance is added to it to be carried away in its current; and at other places this worn-out substance is poured away from it through the outlets provided for its removal. The principal outlets through which the waste of your living laboratory is poured away, have been already spoken of in detail—they are the pores of the skin, the drains of the laboratory; and the pores of the lungs, that with the mouth form the chimney of the laboratory through which the smoke and the vapors from the burned fuel fly away. In addition to these outlets, there is, however, another series by which some denser matters, which can not be got through either the skin-pores or the lungs, are streamed away. This series is continually in operation, but the details of its arrangements are so ingeniously planned, that it accommodates its work to the demand of each passing instant. When, for instance, the perspiring pores of the skin are widely open for the cooling of the frame, and an increased amount of liquid is consequently steamed away through them, then these outlets are narrowed; but when, on the other hand, the skin-pores are closed, or when any extra flood of liquid is thrown into the interior of the frame during cold weather, then the additional outlets at once are brought into very active play.

Now, just imagine the case of a large town, in which there is a certain quantity of waste liquid needing to be carried away through drain-pipes every day, but in which also there occur occasional excessive floods of rain, which must have a way of escape provided for them whenever they happen. How clever you would think it if some skillful engineer fixed valves in the drain-pipes of that town, which kept themselves fast closed under ordinary circumstances, but which opened of their own accord whenever the pressure of an extra flood came, and so allowed the excess of liquid to flow safely and freely away. Such has really been the proceeding of the skillful Engineer of your living frame. Your body is exposed to the risk of occasional excessive floods. When the weather is very cold, for instance, the pores of your skin are closed, and not more than a single pint of liquid can force its way out through them, in the place of the four pints which would pass in warm weather. Much of the water which would otherwise have escaped from the channels of the supply-pipes, then remains in them, coursing round in the progress of the circulation. Sometimes, too, in all probability you will be tempted to swallow an unreasonable quantity of liquid, beyond any demand the mere process of cooling an over-heated frame can require. But whenever you have thus set up an unusual internal flood, sluice-gates are opened, and through these the excess is rapidly poured until the flood is got rid of. In those parts of your body which have been named the kidneys, there are pores through which waste liquid is always draining, without being turned into vapor or steam; but in the kidneys there are also chambers composed of very fine walls, which are strong enough to prevent fluid from passing through them when it is only pressed by a gentle force, but which are not strong enough to do so when the pressure becomes greater in consequence of the over-flooding of the supply-pipes. The kidneys are the sluice-gates of your body, provided with outlets for common use, and with self-acting valves which come into operation upon occasions of excessive flood.

Thus astonishing, then, is the care which has been taken in perfecting the arrangements of the heating service of that complicated laboratory, your living body. Fuel is thrown into an internal furnace, more or less plentifully, according to need. The fuel is there burned, and fanned by air-blasts, which are strengthened or weakened as the occasion may require. The heat produced by the burning is economized by external packings and wrappings, or it is scattered by the opening of evaporating pores on the external surface, and by the drenching of that surface with steaming moisture; and self-acting valves are provided to regulate the quantity of liquid contained in the supply-pipes, so that the cooling pores may never be forced into mischievous activity by the mere pressure of excess in their channels, at a time when the body is already sufficiently chill.

When cold is suddenly applied to the previously warm skin of the living body, it shuts up all the perspiring pores at once, and then empties its supply-pipes of their streaming blood inwards. You know how pale and numb your skin becomes on a cold frosty day, when you stand quietly in the chilling air. That is because the cold squeezes all the blood out of the small vessels of your skin. But where do you suppose the squeezed-out blood goes to? It flows directly into the several internal parts, choking up and overloading their channels. If the skin be soon made warm again, the overloaded parts of the inside once more get emptied, and recover their usual freedom; but if it be kept cold, then their overloading and choking continues, and great discomfort is experienced. All kinds of inflammations and disorders are produced in this way. What are commonly known as colds are internal obstructions of this nature. Cold in the head is an affection in which the lining of the nostrils is overcharged with stagnating blood. Sore throat is caused by a similar condition in the lining of the throat. And cough by the same state in the lining of the vessels and cavities of the chest.

The mere application of a chill temperature to the skin is not alone, however, enough to give a cold. This result chiefly comes when the application has been made while the body is in a weakened or exhausted state, and therefore has not the power to resist and overcome the internal disturbance of the even blood-flow. Colds are nearly always caught in consequence of a sudden exposure of the body to a chill, either when it is in a state of exhaustion and fatigue from sustained exertion, or when it has been for some time previously over-heated. Excess of heat itself soon produces exhaustion, and depression of the strength and the powers of life. When a chill is applied to the skin while the body is fresh and strong, as, for instance, when a man pours cold water over himself the instant he gets out of a warm bed in the morning, after a sound and refreshing sleep, it does no harm, for this reason: First, the blood is driven away from the supply-pipes of the skin by the cold, and flows inwards; but the refreshed heart, then becoming sensible of its arrival, rouses itself to increased effort, and prevents obstruction by pumping on the liquid more vigorously. By this means blood is soon sent back again to the skin in great abundance, and makes it glow with renewed warmth. It is only when the cold is very severe, or very long continued, that this re-action, as it is called, would be hindered, and internal disorder be likely to be set up.

Here, then, is one of the advantages of employing warm clothing. It prevents the catching of cold by protecting the skin from sudden chills at a time when the internal parts of the frame are depressed and unable to meet, without injury, the effects which follow upon it. If at any time you are very weary, and very warm, remember, then, that you must keep yourself warm by drawing more clothes round you, or by some other plan. Want of attention to this very simple proceeding, or absolute ignorance that it ought to be adopted, is among the common means whereby men lay up for themselves disease and suffering, and cause sickness to take the place of health.

How constantly it happens, at the very first appearance of fine weather in spring, that sore throats and coughs and colds are met with everywhere. This is nearly always because people are then tempted to throw aside the warm clothing which they have used through the winter, and so to leave their skins very much more exposed to the influences of the sudden chills, which are quite sure to occur at this time. Just observe what nature herself does in this matter. She does not take off the horse’s warm coat the moment the spring sunshine bursts out in the sky. She compels him to keep it upon his back, at the risk of his being a good deal encumbered by it now and then, because it is better he should submit to this small inconvenience for a time, rather than be exposed to the danger of a grave disease. As you may advantageously take a lesson from the bee as to the management of fresh air in your dwellings, so you may advantageously go to the quadruped to learn how to manage the alteration of your clothing at the change of the seasons. When you see the horse putting on his fine silken garment for summer, follow his example; but until you do see this, be wise, and still keep within the protection of your winter wools and furs.

There is another plan by which people every day expose themselves to the danger of catching cold, and of so falling into disease. They commonly sit in very draughty rooms; apartments which are warmed by bright fires, but which are at the same time chilled by cold wind rushing in at large crannies and crevices, far beyond the quantity which is needed for the mere supply of pure air. Such rooms are warm and cold climates brought together in a nutshell. There is a scorching summer near the fire, and a freezing winter near the window at the same instant. Merely walking about the room therefore takes the body in a moment from one climate to another, and this must happen sometimes when the body is not prepared to meet, and accommodate itself to, the change. A chilled surface, and internal obstructions result, and colds and diseases follow very soon. The inside of rooms should be in winter time very much what they are in the summer season; that is, not too hot, but equally warm in all parts, and with a sufficient current of air passing through them to keep them pure, although not with enough to set up dangerous draughts. If there are draughts, then the protection of warm clothing must be constantly employed, to prevent the chilling influence from attacking the skin. Warm and undraughty dwelling-rooms are the natural allies of warm clothes in health-preserving power.

There is another very excellent companion and helper of warm clothes in this good work. This helper is “exercise.” If, when you are weary and warm, and have no additional clothes to draw round you on the instant to prevent a chill, you sit down or stand still in the cold wind, you will be nearly sure to catch cold, and to be made ill. But if, on the other hand, you keep moving about until you can either clothe yourself more warmly, or go into a warm room, then you will be almost as certain to escape without harm. Exercise aids the heart in keeping the blood moving briskly, and if at any time there is an inclination for the blood-flow to stagnate and get obstructed internally, then exercise overcomes the obstruction, and sends the lagging blood cheerily on toward all parts of the frame, and back toward the skin. Brisk exercise thus possesses the power to overcome mischief, as well as to prevent it. Its influence in quickening and sustaining the flow of the blood-streams through the supply-pipes of the body, necessarily leads in the end to the strengthening of every structure in the frame, and to the rousing of every operation that is carried on in the living laboratory. Every one who values the blessing of health and strength will do well, if his daily task is not one of exertion in the open air, to make such a task for himself. One hour at least out of the twenty-four should be spent in quickening the blood-streams, and in deepening the breathing by walking briskly in some open space where the fresh winds of heaven have free play.

But we will now imagine that in ignorance of all these particulars, or in consequence of some long-continued exertion and exposure which the demands of duty made it altogether impossible for you to avoid, you have caught a cold, and are beginning to suffer from a sore throat, or a cough, or some other sign that matters within are not as they should be. What, under such circumstances, ought you to do to stop the cold, and get rid of it, before serious disorder is brought about? Here, again, warm clothing is of the highest value. If the chilled surface be at once closely covered up, and be kept covered, the blood is soon drawn back to the skin, and the internal obstructions are in this way overcome. The best possible way to get rid of a cold quickly, for those who can follow it, is to go to bed as soon as it begins, and to keep there until the cold is cured. If you can not follow this plan, then _drink as little of any fluid as you can_ for four or five days, and there will soon be not enough blood, as regards quantity, in your body, to keep internal parts overcharged, and they will be relieved, and you will get well. There is this evil in the first plan of curing a cold: people who have lain in bed for some time, come out of it with the pores of their skins more than usually opened, and more than usually disposed to suffer from any fresh chill. People who pursue the second plan may be exposed in any way without meeting this risk.

There are thus, then, golden rules for the management of the clothing, as well as for the management of the feeding, which all people should have stamped on their understandings, and engraved upon their memories. These are:

Follow the example which nature sets, and wear thicker clothing in cold weather than in warm.

Do not lay aside the warm clothing of winter, as soon as fine, mild weather seems to have begun, but wait until you see that nature is taking their winter garments away from the birds and the beasts.

Never expose yourself to a chill without extra clothing, when you are weary, as well as warm.

Never sit in draughts of cold air without putting on extra clothing.

Keep in brisk exercise when you are unable to avoid currents of chill air, and are at the same time fatigued by exertion, and thinly clad.

Never remain in damp clothes longer than you can help. Damp clothes chill the surface of the body very rapidly by carrying away its heat as the moisture is turned into steam. Wet stockings, and boots, or shoes, are injurious, for the same reason as other kinds of wet clothing. They are not more dangerous than other kinds of damp garments, but they have to be encountered much more frequently on account of the ground often remaining wet for long periods, when there is no great excess of moisture in the air. Wet feet produce harm more frequently than wet clothes, because they are much more common.

By a careful and constant attendance to the principles laid down in these golden rules, the attacks of many grave diseases may be avoided, and the advantage which is intended to result from the influence of warm clothes may be most certainly secured.

IN HIM CONFIDING.

The clouds hang heavy round my way,
I can not see;
But through the darkness I believe
God leadeth me.
’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,
While all is dim;
To close my weary, aching eyes,
And follow him.

Through many a thorny path he leads
My tired feet;
Through many a path of tears I go,
But it is sweet
To know that he is close to me,
My God, my guide.
He leadeth me, and so I walk
Quite satisfied.

THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

By PROF. W. T. HARRIS.

V.—EGYPT, PHŒNICIA, JUDEA.

_Egypt._—According to Bunsen, Egypt is the middle place in the world’s history. It is connected directly with the West or Europe, and as directly with the East or Asia.

It is the only country in the great continent of Africa that forms a link in the history of the world. What education is to be found in the other parts of Africa, we have seen in our first chapter on education in the savage tribe. Of course we reckon the Abyssinian Christians, loosely, in this designation of Egypt, and consider Carthage as a part of Phœnician civilization.

Egypt is properly a link in the chain of Asiatic civilization, although geographically located in Africa. Its history is full of interaction with the Semitic peoples of Western Asia, and we find it often in relation with the Hebrews, the Arabians, and the Phœnicians, and even with the far-off nations of the Euphrates and Tigris. Finally the Persians conquer the country under Cambyses, and Egypt is henceforth Persian, then Macedonian, then Roman, then Saracen, and finally a Turkish dependency.

The river Nile is the essential feature of Egypt, more particularly the circumstance of its annual overflow and subsidence. There is little or no rain in Egypt in all the region from the mouth of the Nile up to the last tributary it receives on its way down from the highlands of Abyssinia. Northward from that branch (the Atbara) the Nile valley is eight hundred miles long, and the Nile itself with all its windings flows 1,300 miles, to its mouth.

The copious rains and snows in the mountainous countries at the south supply fertility by the annual inundation, which begins in June, attains its greatest height in September, and then subsides so that the farmers of Egypt can sow their grain on the waters in October, and by November, when the waters have subsided, the green blades of wheat are seen everywhere sprouting through the slimy deposit left by the river. In March there is an abundant harvest. Living was so cheap in Egypt that the cost of bringing up a human being to his twentieth year was not more than four dollars.

The Egyptian finds it possible to conquer nature and make it serve him. He builds canals and dykes and regulates the overflow of the Nile so as to get the utmost service from the fertilizing power of the rich soil that the Nile brings down to him. Observation of nature necessary for the purpose of utilizing the rise of the Nile, leads him to a knowledge of astronomy, the construction of calendars, and hydraulic engineering. He understands irrigation, the construction of canals, dams and reservoirs. He invents the science of geometry because he has to use the art of surveying in order to recover his farm after the inundation, and fix its boundaries. Difficulties that occur in locating farms that are liable to be washed away by new channels cut through by freshets, as well as by the covering up and destruction of old landmarks, lead to a more careful system of laws on the subject of landed property, as well as rights and privileges appertaining to its use, than we can find elsewhere in ancient times.

The greatest contrast exists between the day, which is very hot and bright with light both direct and reflected, and the night, which is very dark and cool.

In contrast to the natural changes which annually prevail, making Egypt first a vast sea of water and then a blooming garden, the people of Egypt strive for permanency.

Their struggle to control nature is their perpetual education. They build enormous architectural structures—temples and pyramids. They love the past and will preserve it if possible. The pyramid is a gigantic tomb, for the high priest who is the king.

Not only the king but all good Egyptians shall have their bodies embalmed and preserved. Their mummies shall be saved from decay in the gigantic tombs of the hillside, above the reach of the Nile floods.

Egypt invented the writing by hieroglyphics, and developed out of that system of picture-writing two other systems of writing, the Syllabic and Alphabetic. Doubtless the Phœnicians borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptians, and diffused a knowledge of it among the peoples living around the Mediterranean Sea.

The priestly caste hold the directive power of Egypt, They administer the education, and rule in the counsels of the state, and give character to whatever is Egyptian.

The idea of death is ever present with the Egyptian. There seems to be some faint idea of its spiritual meaning in their religion.

The god Osiris dies, slain by Typhon, and yet proves himself triumphant over death, and attains perfect individuality after it. In East India there is transmigration of souls as a punishment for the exercise of appetites and desires in the life here. The properly prepared soul reaches extinction in Brahm or in Nirwana. In Egypt, too, transmigration punishes the individual by delaying his ascent into the heaven of Osiris, wherein he may become a companion to that god. While his body does not decay he need not be born again in another body, and if embalmed properly, he can avoid transmigration until he lives again with Osiris.

Egyptian religious ideas are in advance of Persian in the doctrine of evil. The evil is not a principle of such power that it is invincible by the Lord of the good.

The thought of death and the death-court which would decide whether the individual had lived worthily or not, was the greatest educational influence in Egypt.

If the death-court decided that the deceased was worthy, his body should be embalmed, and this saved him from transmigration and secured him ultimate residence with Osiris.

Hieroglyphics can not express clear abstract ideas, but only symbols of ideas. Symbolic thought is not sufficient for science. The Egyptian expresses his ideas in the form of enigmas or riddles. The Sphinx is the most adequate expression of his mind. It has the form of a human bust placed on the body of a lion, rising out of a rock. It expresses the question of its soul: “What is man? Is he only a natural being who, like the rock or the animal, belongs to nature only, and does not escape from it—or does he rise out of it and attain to individual immortality, outlasting all the forms of nature?”

Egypt contributed to the spiritual development of all other lands. It is the great stimulator to the unfolding of mind in Greece and Rome, and all other nations about the Mediterranean. It is the great schoolmaster, not in morals and religion, but in scientific thinking. And yet it did not itself furnish the completed sciences, but only the limits and beginnings of science.

Greek literature abounds in exaggerated accounts of the learning and wisdom of Egypt, and of its appliances for education. We should believe that the Egyptian priesthood constituted a sort of university of philosophy, history, and science.

Arithmetic, geometry, surveying, and mensuration, civil engineering, language, and writing, and, according to some accounts, music formed the chief branches of their education, which varied with the caste. There were scientific schools for the priests and warriors, at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. The education of the common people was at a low standard. Plato tells us that the children of the Egyptians learned to read in classes. Diodorus says that the artisans in particular were taught reading and writing; and this we may readily believe, when we see that so many inscriptions had to be made on the walls of buildings, and on papyrus rolls. It seems that the trades and arts were learned by children from their parents.

The women looked after the out-of-door affairs, while the men did the housework, and especially cared for the training of the children and the work at the loom.

Arithmetic was taught by games and plays, such as trading apples or pieces of money, guessing at the number of grains of wheat concealed in the hand, or by arranging pupils in military lines.

Children went barefoot and almost naked, the climate being very mild. Psammeticus (B. C. 650) sought to introduce foreign ideas, especially Greek and Phœnecian, apparently thinking that something could be gained from those peoples. Foreign languages were taught under his reign, but not in other ages.

The sight of what is strange stimulates us to wonder and reflection. Herodotus, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the wisest of the Greeks speak with reverence of that part of their education received in Egypt.

After Alexandria was founded by the Macedonian Greeks, as the commercial emporium of the world, Egypt became more than ever a center for the collection and distribution of learning and wisdom for the West and for the East.

The Ptolemies cultivated mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar and history. The great museum founded by them in 322 B. C., furnished for two hundred years a sort of dwelling-place and university for the Greek investigators who resorted to Egypt. Even after Christianity had become the established religion under the Romans, Alexandria remained a chief seat of theological controversy.

In this museum there were several large courts surrounded by colonnades opening inward, and seats under the shady trees and by cool fountains, were placed for the scholars. The dwellings of the learned teachers were near by. The famous library was in the court most retired from the street, and free from interruption. There the busy scribes copied out the treasures of the library for the libraries of other lands.

The astronomical observations carried on here surprise us.

The length of a degree on the surface of the earth was measured as accurately as the perfection of their instruments permitted, and the circumference of the earth was calculated by this means. The fact that the earth is round seems to have been well known long before. Eratosthenes, the superintendent of the Alexandrian Library, about two hundred years B. C., computed the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 51' and 20?, and also measured the distance between Syene and Alexandria, and the difference in latitude, by observations on the sun and stars. This gave him data for the calculation of the size of the earth, which he made to be about thirty thousand miles.

_Phœnicia._—Along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on the narrow sea-coast at the foot of the Mountains of Lebanon, were a series of commercial and manufacturing cities, the seat of the Phœnecians. Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Berytus, Tripolis, Aradis were places of great security on the land side, and afforded great security on the seaward side to the shipping of their merchants. The manufacture of metallic goods, glass, linen textures, dyed with the wonderful Tyrian purple, furnished the home productions wherewith to obtain the coveted articles of foreign peoples. Phœnicia was the land of industry and adventurous sailors. The tin from Cornwall, and the amber even from the Baltic were brought home through stormy seas and used in manufactures. The trains of camels loaded with Phœnician wares pierced the deserts and arrived at the great cities on the Euphrates. Cyprus, Crete, Carthage, Gades (Cadiz) were settled by Phœnician colonies. In commerce writing is indispensable, and the Phœnician borrowed the art of writing from Egypt and spread it widely over the world.

For a commercial people the education was of a utilitarian character, especially arithmetic and writing, the commercial arts. The moral training was peculiar, inasmuch as the Phœnician wished to train the youth into roving habits, and to root out early that affection for home and parents that would injure the quality of the sailor. The child was not trained to reverence parents and home. His religious worship, too, was peculiar. He celebrated the pain of his gods. Melkarth was worshiped as a hero who had gone through great and useful labors like Hercules and become a god. Indeed Hercules is just the Greek copy of Melkarth, and was doubtless borrowed from the Phœnicians. The worship of Adonis by a sort of funeral commemoration of his death—loud lamentations and sad ceremonies—prevailed here also. We must note again that this worship of pain in Phœnicia, as well as the reverence for death in Egypt betokens a deeper insight into the mysteries of the relation of the human nature to the divine nature than we could find existing among the Persians or the Hindoos.

The Phœnicians obtained and held a “quarter” set apart for their trading colony in cities wherever they could gain a footing. They introduced luxuries among rude peoples, and found their profit in catering for them. They united producer and consumer, and used deceit and cunning, and (whenever necessary or useful) violence, but always for the promotion of trade.

They carried their forms of religious worship with their wares, and must have met with considerable success in introducing it among the Celtic peoples in Western Europe, if the Druid religion was a Phœnician importation among them, as seems likely.

The Phœnician concealed his discoveries under mythical narrations calculated to frighten away the sailors of other peoples from the places he had discovered. The fearful worship of the fire-god Moloch, to whom they sacrificed especially children, laying them in his red-hot arms while the mothers standing by were not allowed to express their pain at the spectacle by cries, seems to have been a powerful means of educating by religious ceremonial the parental and filial indifference necessary for the training of this people of commercial adventurers.

The Oriental and African education thus far considered does not seem to have had much respect for the individual man as such.

Of all Asiatics the Hebrews are the most interesting to the modern world. These as Jehovah’s chosen people will hold the place of honor throughout all time. They are preëminently the educated people, because educated by Jehovah; and preëminently the educators, because it is through them that the world has been taught the personality of God.

_Judea._—Out from among a Chaldean people, of Sabæan religion, worshipers of the heavenly bodies, went Abraham, and founded a people that should reveal the true God to all nations.

At first there was a nomadic or herdsman’s life of his people; then the Egyptian bondage, a training in the highest civilization of that time. The chosen people were to learn agriculture and the arts, and leave off the herdsman’s life. Then in the promised land comes the development of the city life under the kings. The patriarchal, the agricultural, and the urban phases of life make up the national forms. Then there is the captivity to Babylon in which takes place another phase of the education of this people. Finally, under the Roman dominion, there is born the Desire of all Nations in Bethlehem, and the career of the Hebrews as a chosen people is at an end.

The Jew educated his children with the utmost tenderness and care, for they were the gift of Jehovah, and should be consecrated to him by education in his law and in the teachings of the prophets.