Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-02-10

plunge OF the spear INTO the nlppOpOJa-
mus, as the great dramatic poet cries
| out: "Canst thou fill his skin with
| barbed irons or his head with fish
| spears?" Yea, the fish began TO swim
in the very first book of Genesis,
where my text records, "And God said,
Let the waters bring forth abund-
antly the moving creature that hath
| life. DO you realize that the first
| living thing that God created was the
fish? 1t preceded the bird, the quad
ruped, the human race. The next
thing done after God had kindled for
our world the golden chandelier of the
! sun and the silver chandelier of the
/ moon was to make the fish. The first
motion of the principle of life, prin-
ciple that all the thousands of years
since have not been able to defind or
analyze, the very first stir of life was
in a fish. What an hour that was
when the Euphrates the Gihon, the
Pison, and the Hiddekel, the four rivers
of Paradise, the waters swirled with
fins and frightened with scales.
All the attributes of the infinite God
were called into action for the making
of that first fish. Lanceolate and
translucent miraclel There is enough
wonder in the plate of a sturgeon or
in the cartilage of a shark to onfound
the scientists. 1t does not take the
universe to prove a God. A fish does
ii. No wonder that Linneus and
Cuvier and Agassiz and the greatest
minds of all the centuries sat en-
raptured before its anatomy. Oh, its
beauty, and the adaptedness of its
structure to the element in which 1T
must live: the picture gallery on the
| Of tot az
as they spring up to snatch the flies:
the Grsyling, called the Flower
of Fishes; the Salmon, ascend
ing the Oregon and the Severn,
easily leaping the falls that
would stop them; the bold Perch,
the Gudgeon, silver and black spotted;
the Herring, moving in squadrons five
miles long; the Carp, for cunning
called the Fox of Fishes; the wondrous
| Surgeons, formerly reserved for the
tables of royal families, and the ISM
| glass made out of their membrane; the
Iench, called the physician of fishes
because when applied to human all
ments it is said to be curative; the
Lampreys, So tempting TO the epicurean
that too many of them slew Henry H.:
aye, the whole world of fishes. Enough
of them floating up and down the
rivers to feed the hemispheres If every
ear of corn and every head of wheat
and every herd of quadruped,. and
if every other article of food in all the
earth were destroyed. Universal
drought, leaving not so much as
spear of grass on the round planet,
would leave in the rivers and lakes and
seas for the human race a staple COM
modify of food, which, if brought to
| c6A ha ,lxy 70
feed but fatten the entire human race.
In times to come the world may be so
| populated that the harvests and vine
| yards and land animals may be insult
ficient to feed the human family, and
the nations may be obliged to come to
the rivers and ocean beaches to seek
the living harvests that swim the deep,
and that would mean more health and
vigor and brilliancy and brain than the
human race now own.
The Lord, by placing the fish in the
first course of the menu in paradise,
making it precede bird and beast, indi-
Gated to the world the Importance Of
| the fish as an article of human food.
The reason that men and women lived
three and four and FIVE and nine hu =
dred years was because they were kept
on parched corn and fish. We mix up
n fantastic food that kills the most of
us before 80 years of age Custards
and whipped sillabubs and Roman
punches and chicken salads at mid
night are a gauntlet that few have
strength to run. We put on many a
tombstone glowing epithets saying
that the person beneath died of patri-
otto services or from exhaustion in re-
| ligious work when nothing killed
the poor fellow but lobster eaten
at a party four hours after
he ought to have been sound
asleep in bed. There are men to-day
in our streets so many walking hos
pitfalls, who might have been athletes,
If they had taken the hint of Genesis
in my text and of our Lords remark
and adhered to simplicity of diet. The
reason that the country districts have
furnished most of the men and women
of our time who are doing the
mightiest work in merchandise, in
mechanics, in law, In medicine, in
theology, in legislative and congress
ional halls, and all the Presidents
from Washington down-at least those
who have amounted to anything-is
because they were in those country
districts of necessity kept on PLAIN
diet No man or woman ever
amounted to anything who was
brought up on floating island or angel
cake. The world must turn back to
paradisaic diet if it is to get paradisiac
morals and paradisaic health. The
human race to-day needs more phos-
phorus, and the fish is charged and
surcharged with phosphorus. Phos-
phorus. that which shines in the dark
without burning.
What made the twelve Apostles such
stalwart men that they could endure
anything and achieve everything?
Next to divine inspiration, it was be-
cause they were nearly all fishermen
and lived on fish and few plain con-
diments. Paul, though not brought
up to swing the net and throw the line,
must OF necessity have adopted the
diet of the population among whom he
lived, and you see the PHOSPHORUS in
his daring plea before Felix, and the
PHOSPHORUS in his boldest of all utter
ances before the wiseacres on Mars
Hill, and the PHOSPHORUS as he went
without fright to his beheading,
and the PHOSPHORUS you see in
the lives of all the apostles, who