Alas! the results are no happier.  The healthy animal treads under his feet the helpless and the weak, who suffer that he may grow fat and kick.  The attractive warmth and color and richness are found to be but rottenness and decay.

When, dissatisfied with the teaching of men, one turns to the great world at large, to see whether some practical instinct may not have guided men to a right adjustment, one’s first feeling is one of dismay at the spectacle presented.  The bodily instincts and appetites that seem to work aright in the animal world, in man seem fatally overloaded, and, instead of hitting the mark, explode with disaster and death at the outset.

Let us now turn to the teaching of Christ, and see whether it does not explain the deep disorder of the animal instincts in the world of man, and while saving us on the one hand from the self-mutilation of asceticism, and from the swinishness of the fleshly school on the other, whether it does not embrace the truth that is in both and teach us how to correlate the material and the spiritual.

Now, Dr. Martineau points out that Christ teaches, in contradistinction to asceticism, that the animal body, with its instincts and appetites, is as good on its own plane as the higher and spiritual attributes of man are on theirs.  Our Father knoweth that, in common with other creatures, we have need of physical good, and He has provided us with a self-acting mechanism for its attainment, which will work rightly if only it is left alone and not tampered with.  There is the same provision in us as in them of unconscious instincts and appetites for carrying on the lower life which is necessary as the platform of the higher spiritual being, to set it free, as it were, for the pursuit of its legitimate ends—­all those higher and wider interests in life which are comprised under the one comprehensive name of “the kingdom of God.”  And the teaching of Christ is:  Neither hate nor fear this part of your nature with the ascetic, nor pamper and stimulate it with the Hedonist, but let it alone to act on its own plane; trust it, trust God who made it, while you throw all your conscious energies into the higher concerns of life; and you will find, when left to its own unconscious activity, it is neither an over-nor an under-provision for carrying on your subsistence and that of the race.  “Take no anxious thought [(Greek:  me merimnesete)] for the morrow.”  “Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things,” and has arranged your being accordingly.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.”  “Behold the birds of the air; your heavenly Father feedeth them.”