Now, I wish, under the impression of that conviction, to put before you
just these three thoughts: where the world's food comes from; where the
unveiling which gives light to the world comes from; and where the life
which destroys death for the world comes from--'In this mountain.'

I. Where does the world's food come from?

Physiologists can tell, by studying the dentition--the system of the
teeth--and the digestive apparatus of an animal, what it is meant to
live upon, whether vegetables or flesh, or a mingled diet of both. And
you can tell, if you will, by studying yourself, what, or whom, you are
meant to live upon. The poet said, 'We live by admiration, hope, and
love.' But he did not say on what these faculties, which truly nourish
man's spirit, are to fix and fasten. He tells of the appetites; he does
not tell of their food. My text does: 'In this mountain shall the Lord
make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the less
well refined.' Friends, look at these hearts of yours with their
yearnings, with their passionate desires, with their clamant needs. Will
any human love--the purest, the sweetest, the most unselfish, the most
utter in its surrender--satisfy the heart-hunger of the poorest of us?
No! Look at the capacities of grasping thought and truth in our spirits,
which are ever seek, seek, seeking for absolutely certain foundations on
which we may build the whole structure of our beliefs. You have to go
deeper down than the sand of man's thinkings and teachings before you
can reach what will bear without shifting the foundations of a life's
credence and confidence. Look at these tumultuous wills of ours that
fancy they crave to be independent, and really crave an absolute master
whom it is blessedness to obey. You will find none such beneath the
stars. The very elements of our being, our heart, will, mind, desires,