The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-02-06
SPIRITUAL AND
PHYSICAL FOOD
The Rev. Or. J. W. Stagg
breaches on Bread of Life"
The POWER OF HUNGER
The Souls Appetite Satisfied in Je-
sus--God's Use of the Law
of Necessity for
Food.

The Rev. Dr. John w Stage preached
yesterday at the First Presbyterian
church on THE Bread of Life" His text
was taken from John 9:s3;
For the bread of God is he which
oometh down from heaven and giveth
life unto the world
He said in part:
One DOES not have to read the new
testament long before pelng impressed
with the fact that Jesus regarded him
self as essential to the life of The race
He shows this estimate of Himself by
awing the iikeenss from those things
that all men are agreed on as essential
to the life here.
The quickest way of conquerlng is not
by killing people with cannon, hut by
cutting off their base of supply. There is
not an army on the earth that could en-
dure thirty days, provided its source of
bread was absolutely cut off, Consequent
~ lifes dependence on bread Is easily un-
derstood.
Gratifying appetite is one of the first
causes of progress. 1t is law writ
to roots of flora and fnrna seeking in
the soil for food and trees and vegita-
ton feeling in the sunshine and air for
those elements that keep life. Nature.
with feast and sorrow. heat and light. be-
comes vast laboratory when chemical
elements work for the making of food
for living things. The climbing of vine
ON wall, or the clinging of a fern to
the barren rock, is the effort of nature
to find, In even the out of the way
places, the bread for keeping life.
Necessity for Food
Animals will pass from one zone to an
other If impeled by the necessity for
something to eat, Locomotion In the ami
NAL kingdom has its divinest reasonable
ness just here. Whatever laws may gov
ern animal life in other particulars they
all are dependent on food SUPPLY In Vir-
ginia. as far removed from the war as
the year 1870, animals still bore the marks
of want
With man there is no exception. Some
time ago there was in my house "a ma n
twenty-five years old. who stood Eve feet
two inches-full grown; in every bone
and feature was plainly to be seen that
the food supply had been either of too
poor kind or too small an amount. Art
has gotten many line OF beauty from
the roundness of plenty ard likewise
many line of the ugly from the severe
angles of starvation The ugliest thing
In the world is starvation, The most an
pealing thing among men is the drawn
muscle and the exposed bone of a starv-
ing man.
From the struggle of the little flower
that finds it's food supply In the SHOWS
of the Alps to the towering building that
Is the cities pride flower and tree. ami
NAL and man are being impeled by a
law that is ingrained, and that law is
that everything that lives must eat.
Gods Use of the Law.
God has used this law for wise and
benefcient purposes In the life of its race.
Abraham found his way into Egypt in
consequence of 1t. Moses found his way
to the land of Canaan by the desire of
land flowing with milk and honey.
Vandala beat down the gates and de-
stroyed the treasures of centuries in the
city of Rome itself in search of some
thing to make life fuller and happier.
What the growl of hungry men IN Rus
sia means, no man can now fully tell
but II the right leader comes along (and
he generally does the French Revolution
may find its parallel in the twentieth
century. The law Is universal and 1t is
the most dangerous of all principles to
treat irrevently. A lions growl from hun
ger may foretell no damage provided he
is Gagged, but mans growl from lack oe
bread. unless his hunger is satisfied, will
increase until II shakes empires and over
throws dynastes.
1t is a hint at divinity that a Jewish
peasant two thousand years ago should
have set out his relationship to the race
under the figure of bread and it's rela-
tionship to life. And yet men who under
stand the latte so well that they live
their lives like beasts of burden, lest they
fa.. to lay ~ a sufficient supply, either
are Indifferent to, or else do not UNDER
stand any better than the ancient people