I awaken in the morning, and the first horrible emergency of the day confronts me at once, I have to get up.  How I get up I have no idea.  Professor James once said that when a man thinks about it he never does get up, and that’s right; but I find myself in the middle of the floor and that is all I know, and then the cold air or the sight of my clothes or something reminds me to start dressing, and the putting on of one garment leads to the putting on of another.  The pangs of hunger call me to the breakfast table; the bell calls me to work; and so all day long response follows stimulus; the day’s work is a success or a failure according to the response which I make to the stimuli which I receive.

There is a marvelous picture given in the scripture in the parable of the poor man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and getting wounded and left by the road-side.  Three men pass that way.  They all see the same thing.  The light is reflected from the poor sufferer into the eyes of these passers-by; a flood of vibration passes on to the brain and then the motor impulses go out to the muscles.  In the case of the good Samaritan, the impulse went from the brain or the spinal nerve to the arms and he stooped down and picked the poor fellow up and carried him off; while in the priest and the Levite the impulses all went down into the legs and the cowards hustled off for Jericho.

A healthy nervous system is the rarest thing in this wide world.  I have one illustration in mind, which I always like to think of, which I am going to give you of a perfectly healthy and normal nervous system.  It was possessed by a good old negro minister.  He had been preaching to his congregation for a long time on the subject of meekness and it had not produced the desired effect; so he said to them one morning:  “Brethren, I’se gwine to give you the illustration of meekness for a week now and show you what it is,” and the old man did.  His congregation naturally rose to the occasion:  They insulted his wife; they abused his children; they stoned his dog; they stole his chickens; they did everything under the heaven to break down the meekness of that man; but he went on through the week and came into church the next Sunday and began to preach.  The congregation recognized that their time was short and they redoubled their efforts, but all in vain.  Finally, about five minutes before the closing of the service, he turned to the congregation and said:  “Brethren, I think I ought to denounce to this congregation that my week of meekness is just about up, and when the clock in yonder steeple strikes twelve, I’se gwine to quit preachin’, close this blessed Bible, go down from this pulpit, and then, Brethren, Judgment day and hell is gwine to break loose on some of you.”  Now, that old colored minister had an ideal nervous system.  There had not been one single response all that week long, and not one single stimulus which had come in from the outside had been lost either, but it was all waiting to leap into that good right arm when the emergency was to be met, in the fullness of time, and I commend you to go and do likewise.