This word which makes all meats clean, ought for ever to decide the question whether certain drinks are in the abstract unlawful for a Christian. We must remember that it leaves untouched the question, what restrictions may be necessary for men who have depraved and debased their own appetites, until innocent indulgence _does_ reach the heart and pervert it. Hand and foot are innocent, but men there are who cannot enter into life otherwise than halt or maimed. Also it leaves untouched the question, as long as such men exist, how far may I be privileged to share and so to lighten the burden imposed on them by past transgressions? It is surely a noble sign of religious life in our day, that many thousands can say, as the Apostle said, of innocent joys, “Have we not a right? ... Nevertheless we did not use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.” Nevertheless the rule is absolute: “Whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him.” And the Church of Christ is bound to maintain, uncompromised and absolute, the liberty of Christian souls. Let us not fail to contrast such teaching as this of Jesus with that of our modern materialism. “The value of meat and drink is perfectly transcendental,” says one. “Man is what he eats,” says another. But it is enough to make us tremble, to ask what will issue from such teaching if it ever grasps firmly the mind of a single generation. What will become of honesty, when the value of what may be had by theft is transcendental? How shall armies be persuaded to suffer hardness, and populations to famish within beleaguered walls, when they learn that “man is what he eats,” so that his very essence is visibly enfeebled, his personality starved out, as he grows pale and wasted underneath his country’s flag? In vain shall such a generation strive to keep alive the flame of generous self-devotion. Self-devotion seemed to their fathers to be the noblest attainment; to them it can be only a worn-out form of speech to say that the soul can overcome the flesh. For to them the man is the flesh; he is the resultant of his nourishment; what enters into the mouth makes his character, for it makes him all. There is that within us all which knows better; which sets against the aphorism, “Man is what he eats;” the text “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he;” which will always spurn the doctrine of the brute, when it is boldly confronted with the doctrine of the Crucified. The Children And The Dogs.