Part 54

M. A. E.

THE SIXTH DAY

THE CROWN OF GOD'S CREATION.

"The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life."--JOB xxxiii. 4.

"In Him we live, and move, and have our being ... for we are also His offspring."--ACTS xvii. 28.

"I will praise Thee: for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."--PSALM cxxxix. 14.

"Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."--1 COR. vi. 20.

Before we speak of the last work of God upon the last of those wonderful days of which we are told in the first chapter of the Bible, let us read the verses about it, from the twenty-sixth to the end of that chapter, and to the tenth verse of the next. And then let us read the eighth Psalm, unless indeed you can repeat it, as my little scholars once could--and I hope they have not forgotten it now.

I think the first thing we noticed as we read was, that after the verses which speak of the beasts and creeping things which God made on the SIXTH DAY, there is, as it were, a close to the history, and then a fresh beginning.

We read, "And God saw that it was good." There is a full stop there; and again we read--now for the eighth time--the three words, "And God said."

But this is not all; a very wonderful expression, which had not been used in connection with any part of the work of God, is employed to tell us of the creation of the man who was placed by God as the head of all that He had made, the one to whom He gave dominion, after He had made the earth, and brought it all into order.

God had said, "Let the waters bring forth.... Let the earth bring forth" living creatures. "And God made the beast of the earth"; but before man was created He said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

Of no other creature could it be said that he was made in the likeness of God, and of no other do we read that he was "formed" by God "of the dust of the ground," and that the Lord God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life"; then, and not till then, did man become a "living soul." The body was made of earth, but the soul came immediately from God.

The more we learn about our own body, that wonderful and beautiful house in which we live, the more we shall see, in what God thus formed from the dust of the ground, to call forth our admiration; but the body of the first man, although fashioned with such perfection in all its parts, did not live until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

Let us never forget how great a difference God has put between man, about whose creation He took thought, and who was made in His image, to whom He has given speech, reason, and a deathless soul, and all the creatures concerning which we read none of these things.

And now let us learn just a very little about the way in which God has formed what His word speaks of as our "house" or "tent"--the dwelling-place of the soul and spirit.

It would be strange indeed if we did not care to know something about our own home; but our body is not only the house in which we live, it is also the means, through those five senses--the eye, the ear, and the organs of touch, taste, and smell--which have been so well called "the five gateways of knowledge," by which we learn all that can be known by us of the world outside us.

More than this, it is the wonderfully perfect instrument, and implicitly obedient servant, by which all that we do is performed.

But the science that teaches us all that is known about our bodies is a very difficult study, and there are many hard names to master, even at the very outset. For instance, when we speak of the bony framework--that skeleton which, as you know, belongs to us in common with the vertebrate animals--there is a great deal which you would find very difficult to remember.

Still, as I daresay you have found out, the more we learn, even of difficult sciences, the more we can learn, and little May (though, to be sure, she is now four years older than she was when you first made her acquaintance) has learnt a good many of the hard words. She could show you upon her own round arm, just where the bone which reaches from the shoulder to the elbow begins and ends, and tell you its name, and the names of the two bones which reach from the elbow to the wrist, and of the wrist-bones, and of those which you can feel in the palm of your hand, and the finger-bones.

But when you hear that you have more than two hundred bones in your body, you will be inclined to agree with me that it would take both of us some time to learn even their names, much more to know all about them.

The spine consists of twenty-four short bones, each with a little ring. These vertebras are piled up one upon the other; for God has made our bodies upright; our faces, are lifted upwards, and our eyes look straight before us. These twenty-four little bones are closely and strongly bound together, and between each one and its neighbour there is something so soft and elastic that we can bend our heads, or move in any direction, without the slightest strain or jar.

The head is most wonderfully built up, like an arch, of several bones beautifully joined in a very strong and perfect way which carpenters call "dove-tailing." We can understand why the head, which is so much exposed, and is almost entirely occupied by the brain, should be so carefully protected; for thought, memory, will, and what we can best express as "consciousness of our being," all depend upon it.

Passing from head to foot, we find that our feet, which are not large, yet must bear the weight of the body, are also made upon the arch-principle, which has been found, like the hollow bones of the bird's wing, to combine lightness and strength. The twenty-six bones are so fitted together that this wonderful arch is quite elastic, as you can prove by moving your own foot up and down.

The joints, where two bones which are to play upon each other come in contact, as they do at the elbow or shoulder, are made in different ways. The elbow only moves to and fro like a hinge; the hip and shoulder, like a "ball and socket," move every way. You do not need to be told that each kind of joint is found just where it is needed for the work it has to do; for there is no mistaking or misplacing in God's workmanship, as there so often is in the very best of ours.

I cannot at present tell you anything about the muscles, except that it is by their means that we move arms, legs, head, eyes--every part of the body, for bones cannot move of themselves, but are acted on by the muscles.

Nor can we learn much about the nerves, because the subject is very difficult to understand. They come from the brain in the head, and from that part of it which runs all down the backbone, through the little bony rings of the vertebræ; and they are protected, because they are so very delicate, and so precious to us, by a strong bony sheath. At first these nerves are like coarse twine, but they divide and divide until they become as fine as threads of white silk--almost as fine as the stronger part of a spider's web--and they go all over the body, reaching to the very tips of the fingers.

The first pair of nerves goes to the nose, for smell; the second to the eye, for sight; and so on for hearing and taste. These are the nerves called "sensory," which carry to the brain sensations from outside the body. The "motor" nerves are those which take orders from the brain, to be instantly obeyed by the muscles.