Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1893-02-09

The fish has priority of residence over
every living thing. The next thing done
after God had kinded 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, u principle that all the thousands of
years since have not been able to define or
| analyac, the very first stir of life, was in a
| fish
What an hour that was when in the Eu-
| pirates, the Gihon, the Pison and the Hid
| dekcl, the four rivers of paradise, the
waters swirlcd with fins and frightened
! with scales! All the attributes of the inf
mite God were called into action for the
making of that first fish. I.anceolate and
/ TRANSLUCENT miraclc There is enough won
| der in the plate of n sturgeon or in the car
! tilage of a shark to confound the scientists.
! 1t does not take the universe to prove u
! God. \ fish does il.
No wonder that LinnGus and Cuvier and
! Agassiz and the greatest minds of all the
centuries sat cnraptured before its anatomy.
! Oh it's beauty and the adaptedness of its
structure to the element in which it must
! live; the picture gallery on the sides of the
| mountain trout unveiled as they spring UP
to snatch the flies; the grayling, called the
flower of fishes; the salmon, ascending 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 isinglasS made out of their mem
| brane; the tcnch, called the physician Of
fishes, because when applied to human all
| ments it is said to be curative; the lam
preys, so tempting to the epicurean that
too many of them slew Henry II-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 de-
stroyed. Universal droug3e, 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 staple COM
modify of food which, if brought to shore,
would be enough not only to feed but fat
ten the entire human race In times to
come the world may be so populated that
the harvests and vineyards and land ami
mails may be insufficient to feed the hui
man 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.
FISH FOOD MAKES STRONG MEN.
The Lord by placing the fish in the first
course of the menu in paradise, making it
preCede bird and beast indicated to the
world the Importance of the fish as an arti-
Gle of human food. The reason that men
and women lived three and four and five
and nine hundred years was because they
were kept on parched corn and fish. We
mix up a fantastic food that kills the most
of us before 80 years of age Custards and
whipped sillabubs and Roman punches and
chicken salads at midnight are a gauntlet
that few have strength TO run.
We put on many a tombstone glowing
epithets saying that the person beneath
died of patriotic services or from cXhaus-
ton in religious work, when nothing killed
the poor fellow but lobster eaten at a party
| Tour hours after he ought to have been
sound asleep in bed. There are men today
in our streets so many walking hospitals
who might have been athletes if they had
taken the hint of Genesis in my text and of
our Lords remark and adhered to simplici-
ty 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,
III medicine, in theology, in legislative and
congressional halls and all the presidents
from Washington down-at least those
who have amounted to anything-is be
cause they were i'll 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 para
disiac diet if it is to get paradisiac morals
and paradisiac health. The human race
today needs more phosphorus, and the fish
is charged and surcharged with phosphor-
us-phosphorus, that which shines in the
dark without burning.
THE APOSTOLIC FISHERMEN.
What made the II apostles such stalwart
men that they could endure anything and
achieve everything? Next to divine inspi-
ion, it was because they were nearly all
fishermen and lived on fish and few plain
condiments. 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 be-
fore Felix, and the phosphorus in his bold
ness of all utterances before the wiseacres
on Mars hill, and the phosphorus as he
went without fright to his bcheading and
the phosphorus you see in the lives of all
the apostles who moved right on undaunt-
ed to certain martyrdom, whether to be
decapitated or flung off precipices or hung
in cruciixion. Phosphorus shining in the
dark without burning.
No man or woman that ever lived was in
dependent Of questions of diet. Let those
who by circumstances are compelled to
simplicity of diet thank God for their res
cue from the temptation of killing delica-
cies The men and women who arc to de-
eide the drift of the Goth century, which is
only seven or eight steps off, are now five
miles back from the rail station and had
for breakfast this morning a similar bill OF
fare to that which Christ provided for the
fishermen disciples on the banks of Lake
Galilee.
Indeed the only articles of food that
Christ by miracle multiplied We're bread
and fish which the boy who acted as sut-
Ter to the 1000 people of the wilderness
handed over-fve barley loaves and two
fishes. The boy must have felt badly when
called on to give up the two fishes which he
had brought out after having caught them