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The Fundamentals and indeed, his very existence in the body, are dependent on food, and this food itself must be organic matter, that is to say, matter which has once been living. The fact of this depend ence upon food, and upon food which man is utterly unable to make for himself out of inorganic matter, though all the materials are within his-reach,'should teach him a lesson in humility; but it seems not to have that effect. We say that man is utterly unable to produce food-stuff though all the materials whereof it is composed are abundantly at hand. This is a pertinent and obvious fact, though one whereof little account is taken. God has imparted to the lowly plant the ministry of supplying food to all the animal creation, and has taught to it, and to it alone, the marvelous secret of converting the minerals of the earth and air-j||nert, lifeless elements, utterly incapable of furnishing nourishment to animals or man—into living tissue, endowed with the property of nourishing living creatures higher in the scale of life. “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man; that he may bring forth food out of the earth” (Psa. 104:14). The humble vegetable organism knows how to extract the nitrogen from the earth, and the carbon from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to combine these, in exactly the proper proportions, with the oxygen and hydrogen in water, and with traces of lime and other elements, forming with the aid of heat and light from the sun, living tissue, suitable and necessary for food. This wonderful operation of chemical synthesis is carried on by the modest vegetable so unostenta tiously as to attract little notice; and though it has been under the observation of inquisitive and imitative man fqr thousands of years he has not the faintest notion of how it is done. All the learning and skill of all the chemists in the world, with the resources of all the laboratories in the world, could not produce an ounce of food, though the elements out of which it is made exist everywhere, and in the greatest abundance.
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