ight on.
Sleep is nature's provision for the recuperation of the body, for the
rebuilding and hence the replacing of the waste that is continually going
on during the waking hours. It is nature's great restorer. If
sufficient sleep is not allowed the body, so that the rebuilding may
equalize the wasting process, the body is gradually depleted and
weakened, and any ailment or malady, when it is in this condition, is
able to find a more ready entrance. It is for this reason that those who
are subject to it will take a cold, as we term it, more readily when the
body is tired or exhausted through loss of sleep than at most any other
time. The body is in that condition where outside influences can have a
more ready effect upon it, than when it is in its normal condition. And
when they do have an effect they always go to the weaker portions first.

Our bodies are given us to serve far higher purposes than we ordinarily
use them for. Especially is this true in the numerous cases where the
body is master of its owner. In the degree that we come into the
realization of the higher powers of the mind and spirit, in that degree
does the body, through their influence upon it, become less gross and
heavy, finer in its texture and form. And then, because the mind finds a
kingdom of enjoyment in itself, and in all the higher things it becomes
related to, _excesses_ in eating and drinking, as well as all others,
naturally and of their own accord fall away. There also falls away the
desire for the heavier, grosser, less valuable kinds of food and drink,
such as the flesh of animals, alcoholic drinks, and all things of the
class that stimulate the body and the passions rather than build the body
and the brain into a strong, clean, well-nourished, enduring, and fibrous
condition. In the degree that the body thus becomes less gross and
heavy, finer in its texture and form, is there less waste, and what there
is is more easily replaced, so that it keeps in a more regular and even
condition. When this is true, less sleep is actually required. And even
the amount that is taken does more for a body of this finer type than it
can do for one of the other nature.

As the body in this way grows finer, in other words, as the process of
its evolution is thus accelerated, it in turn helps the mind and the soul
in the realization of ever higher perceptions, and thus body helps mind
the same as mind builds body. It was undoubtedly this fact