ngers require a very large
amount of nervous control for a very small output of muscular energy and
their exercise stimulates the very highest centers in the brain, and this
is the great argument for physical training, that through one muscle or
another you can stimulate and develop as you choose either any vital organ
or the highest center in the brain.

Never forget the maxim of the old German physiologist that "Health comes in
through the muscles and flows out through the nerves." The nervous system
was created for good and wise ends, but in many people it has become a
nuisance. Its use is to insure that every stimulus from the external world
shall call forth a response suited to the emergency. A fly lights upon my
face; I wave my hand and drive him away. The fly has tickled my face; there
is the external stimulus. A sensory impulse travels to the brain or to some
other center and a motor impulse goes from there to a certain muscle in my
arm which moves my hand and drives away the fly. The impulse has called out
a response suited to that emergency. You watch a cat walk across the lawn;
you will think that fool cat is going to fall down, it is going so slowly
and it can hardly raise one foot above the other, but watch it when it sees
its prey; every muscle seems to turn to steel; it is ready for the spring.
When that spring is made there is no energy wasted. After that the cat does
not move for two hours; no wasting energy there. Wasting of energy is a
sin.

I awaken in the morning, and the first horrible emergency of the day
confronts me at once, I have to get up. How I get up I have no idea.
Professor James once said that when a man thinks about it he never does get
up, and that's right; but I find myself in the middle of the floor and that
is all I know, and then the cold air or the sight of my clothes or
something reminds me to start dressing, and the putting on of one garment
leads to the putting on of another. The pangs of hunger call me to the
breakfast table; the bell calls me to work; and so all day long response
follows stimulus; the day's work is a success or a failure according to the
response which I make to the stimuli which I receive.

There is a marvelous picture given in the scripture in the parable of the
poor man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and getting wounded and left
by the road-side. Three men pass that way. They all see the same thing. The
light is reflected from the poor sufferer into