"Well said," he replied; "and since you have so wisely determined, I am free to inform you that these new obligations, like those you have heretofore taken, contain nothing which can conflict with your duty to God, your country, your neighbor, or yourself. In considering the phenomena presented by the suspension of the act of breathing, it should occur to you that where little labor is to be performed, little consumption of energy is required. Where there is such a trifling destruction of the vital force (not mind force) as at present is the case with us, it requires but slight respiration to retain the normal condition of the body. On earth's surface the act of respiration alone consumes by far the larger proportion of vital energy, and the muscular exertion involved thereby necessitates a proportionate amount of breathing in order that breath itself may continue. This act of respiration is the result of one of the conditions of surface earth life, and consumes most of the vital force. If men would think of this, they would understand how paradoxical it is for them to breathe in order to live, when the very act of respiration wears away their bodies and shortens their lives more than all else they have to do, and without adding to their mental or physical constitution in the least. Men are conversant with physical death as a constant result of suspended respiration, and with respiration as an accompaniment of life, which ever constant and connected conditions lead them to accept that the act of breathing is a necessity of mortal life. In reality, man occupies an unfortunate position among other undeveloped creatures of external earth; he is an animal, and is constitutionally framed like the other animals about him. He is exposed to the warring elements, to the vicious attacks of savage beasts and insidious parasites, and to the inroads of disease. He is a prey to the elementary vicissitudes of the undesirable exposure in which he exists upon the outer surface of our globe, where all is war, even among the forces of nature about him. These conditions render his lot an unhappy one indeed, and in ignorance he overlooks the torments of the weary, rasping, endless slavery of respiration in the personal struggle he has to undergo in order to retain a brief existence as an organized being. Have you never thought of the connected tribulations that the wear and tear of respiration alone inflict upon the human family? The heaving of the chest, the circulation of the blood, the throbbing of the heart, continue from mortal birth until death. The heart of man forces about two and one-half ounces of blood with each pulsation. At seventy beats per minute this amounts to six hundred and fifty-six pounds per hour, or nearly eight tons per day. The lungs respire over one thousand times an hour, and move over three thousand gallons of air a day. Multiply these amounts by three hundred and sixty-five, and then by seventy, and you have partly computed the