SCRIPTURE-LANGUAGE is not rich in names for all the hidden parts of our body.
In the years when the Spirit of the Lord compiled the Holy Scripture, anatomy was not what it is now. When therefore there is mention of “the belly” this must not be understood in an artificial way, but as a general expression for the whole middle-part of your body. Hence, that it is also used for what we call our heart, or nature.
That middle-part of your body the Scripture compares to an house, and in that house she imagines chambers that face the outside, and chambers that face toward inner courts, and because that middle part of your body has no eyes, she presents these inner chambers as dark.
But in those dark inner chambers of your body she now tells you, that the Lord ignites a light. He ignites the light of a candle, and that candle, wherewith the Lord ignites light in your body, is your soul.
Read it in Proverbs 20, 27: “The soul of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” Words somewhat strange, but which after this brief explanation will be sufficiently clear. For this proverb is also taken merely metaphorically for the heart (nature), but without reason.
Death is dark and somber.
When death has entered in, all light in us is gone out. God, Who is Lord of life and death, has then extinguished the light in our eye, and taken away the light that inwardly shone through our body.
It is all set in black, dark night.
ALSO with sickness and disease therefore our soul has a task to fulfill in our body.
Thus it renders service as a candle given us of God, inwardly to examine our body.
A characteristic, picturesque expression, by which to say, that by the sense (perception) of our soul we observe and feel what goes on inwardly in our body.
Feeling truly operates through our nerves, but feeling is located in those nerves themselves equally little, as a telegram hides in stretched electric wire.
If the nerves were not mysteriously related to the soul, and did the soul, by means of the nerves, not catch the emotions, you would not become aware of anything.
See it in the case of a man who has been chloroformed. Then the relation between his soul and his nerves has been lifted for a moment, and then a leg can be amputated, without his knowing anything about it.
Thus it is indeed your soul that renders service, to be on the watch for what goes on in your body, and now, as Bilderdyk so beautifully observes, it is pain, given us of God as a means to warn us, that conditions in the body are not what they should be.
By feeling, what we call, unwell, to have unpleasant sensations, or when it becomes worse, to become oppressed, to suffer pain, God the Lord causes you to discover by the candle of your soul, that it is not well with you.
As a rule He even makes you discover by the candle of your soul, where the wrong in your body hides, and so enables you to tell the physician, what he himself cannot see.
By that same candle of your soul He discovers it to you, as soon as after strenuous labor the strength of your body is exhausted; for then you become tired.
By that same candle of your soul He warns you, in case by intemperate use of food or drink you might sin against your body; for then you feel oppressed or dizzy. And by that same candle of your soul He warns you, in like manner, when you are seized by cold or sickness; for then you feel indisposed.
VERY extensive therefore is the service, which, from the side of the Lord, our soul renders also in and for our body; for of course it also tells you, whether the means you employ, for the restoration of your health, is efficacious.
The glorious feeling when distress diminishes or departs; when pain abates or at least grows less; when feeling indisposed gives place to a more refreshing sense of relief; and thus you observe that the medicine did you good, it is all a knowledge of what goes on in your body, which is brought you by your soul.
Hence passive insensibility about your body is not willed by your God.
When in the dark inner chambers of your body He ignites a candle, it is to a purpose. Then it is His will, that by that light you should see and observe what goes on in the mysterious hidden parts of your body. It is His will, that fortified by that knowledge, you shall so care for your body and so regulate your life, as is necessary, to insure your well-being. And also, when there appears to be trouble in the inner chambers of your body, that you will provide counsel, and shall apply the means of correcting what went amiss.
BUT that candle of the soul performs also more important services, first with respect to the life that comes, and presently with respect to the life that goes under.
First, with respect to the life that comes. For it is by the light that shines out from that candle in the inner chambers of the body, that a mother sees and loves her child, before it is yet born.
That wondrous, mysterious love, from which presently strength is born, to triumph over the sorrow, in which the child shall be brought forth; and from which some moments later the almost heavenly blessedness of mother-wealth is born, when she presses the little one to her heart, which only now she sees, and which yet she really already saw; which now for the first her eye beholds, and which yet is not strange to her. The little one, that she knew; with which she had lived already months together in blessed sympathy; and which long before he came, had won her love.
But then also when life diminishes and presently departs.
Commonly in the form, that one begins to feel old, and can no more do what once he did.
Then the Lord illumines us inwardly with that candle, and by that light we observe, that the house and in that house our inner chambers lose something of their original freshness, and this the Lord shows us, to tell us, that moderation becomes duty, that the body can no more be taxed to the extent of former days; more still, to warn us, that the body is running down, and that slowly the end approaches.
Sometimes also the Lord sends us those dread warnings while we are still in the strength of our life, when by that candle of our soul He makes us see, that in those hidden inner chambers there is a germ of corruption at work. which is incurable, and destined to break down our body, as is said, before one’s time.
And wise is he, who does not treat this lightly, but lets himself be warned by his God, and prepares himself for the end, for the rapid unravelment which comes.
THERE are two things yet, which the candle of the Lord effects in our body. Intimidating is one, comforting the other.
When with that candle of the soul the Lord makes light in the darkness of our body, He is also the Holy One, and Who thereby discovers to our eye the bitter fruit of sin, which is observable in the inner chambers of the soul.
Sometimes the fruit of a passing sin, when, in whatsoever manner, we have gone beyond ourselves, and guilty weariness works its after effects. But sometimes also, the results of gross sins still work their aftermath, of sins of youth, or sins of mid-life.
He Who then holds the candle, is our Judge, Who wills that we should humble ourselves before His face.
But sometimes also that candle of the Lord in the inner chambers of our body brings blessed comforting.
Once indeed we must part from this body, and for a time our soul shall be unclothed.
But so it will not continue. Some day the Lord returns upon the clouds, and then every one that fell asleep in Jesus, receives his body back again in glorious form.
And of this also that candle of the Lord makes you conjecture something prophetic.
It shows you, that in your body also, mysterious and hidden, there is something that eternally abides.
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