We forget, my hearers, that the great law of nature, “Like produces like,” is universal. “Every seed after its kind is the law of all creation.” There is no exception to this law. This principle obtains not only in the production of life, but in the processes of its development. If my position about the intimacy of soul and body is true, then, if a man’s body is made up chiefly of flesh taken from diseased animals, and his whole physical frame is saturated with the irritating and exciting condiments of what is popularly called good food, the whole bias of his bodily powers will be toward animalism. All the impressions and impulses that the soul receives from such a body are beastly and debasing. Like produces like in the formation of physical tissue out of food, as well as in the generation of stock in the stall. Hence I hold that very much of the wickedness of mankind is the natural expression of physical beastliness rather than the outflow of innate viciousness. A body made up largely of all manner of nerve-goading, passion-producing, anger-generating elements, such as are found in the gross animal dishes with their stimulating adjuncts, just as surely drives the soul to sin as a tempest drives a feather before it. As modern research has proved that bad or imperfect food when digested surely makes bad or imperfect blood, incapable of performing its appointed work of upbuilding and of reparation, so has science demonstrated that perfect food is one of the most potent among remedies for the relief of many diseased conditions. Since the blood is the life, and since blood is merely food emulsified, mingled with certain digestive fluids and colored by the oxygen with which it is brought in contact in the lungs—it is easy to understand how perfect food may create perfect blood, which shall presently supplant that which is feeble, that which is lacking in waste-repairing power, that which fails to give strength to the muscles or vigor to the brain, and may thus become the most effective medicine. A perusal of recent professional medical literature evinces the great stress which is now laid upon dietetics in the treatment of all diseases. The approach to this high altitude has been gradual, but sure. At first foods were made the vehicles for drugs; and cod-liver oil and malt-extracts, which are only concentrated foods of the hydro-carbon varieties, were loaded with lime and iron and strychnine and phosphorous and scores of other drugs. But perfect results were secured by the use of these foods without the drug additions, and so the foods were at last given the credit which all along belonged to them. And so it has come to pass that with advanced medical men, in a vast majority of cases of sickness, the support of the life-powers by proper nutrients is the foremost thought, the best food proving to be the best medicine.