"SOUL FOOD"
A Book By G. D. Watson - A 19th Century Deeper-Life Author
CHAPTER 1: "SOUL FOOD"
The soul has its appropriate food, and its mystical way of eating and digesting, just as the body. The soul feeds on truth and love, and the Divine personalities. It feeds on truth through the intellect; it feeds on love through the affections; and it feeds on Divine personalities through the choices and appropriations of the will.
1- THE CONDITIONS OF SOUL-FEEDING:
These are, first, life; second, health; third, zest. In regeneration, the Christ-life is imparted to the soul. This life, like all other kinds, is known by its characteristics. All life is invisible and inscrutable. We may search all living substances, but no microscope has ever yet found what life is. It is a fathomless mystery, whether in vegetable, animal or spirit, and known only to God.
But we know that Christ can and does impart His life to the penitent, believing soul; and we know that this Christ-life can feed and grow and manifest itself similar to other kinds of life. It is not only needful to have this life, but to have it in a state of good soul-health. This implies the being cleansed from all moral disease, from all evil tempers and evil desires, from all self-will, and every principal of the carnal mind. Until the spiritual nature is thoroughly sanctified, its appetite is poor, its digestion is weak, and it craves a very light diet of religious food, made up largely of human intellectuality. For the soul to feed well, it not only needs life and health, but a lively zest of the faculties. This zest is acquired by practice, and by the quality of the food the soul takes in.
2-THE MANNER OF SOUL-FEEDING:
In the mystical process of feeding the soul, perception of truth corresponds to eating, by which truth is taken into the mind. The more rapidly and clearly we apprehend all kinds of spiritual truth, the more largely do we eat; for just what taking food in the mouth and chewing it is to the body, the clear analysis and vivid apprehension of truth is to the soul; so that our perceptions are the mouth of the spirit. Faith is the digestive organ of the soul. It is by faith that the truth is dissolved and prepared to make living substance. A spiritual dyspeptic is one who has large perceptions of truth, but no adequate faith to digest it and turn it into experience. Just as the stomach of the body is often ruined by alcohol, tobacco and other poisons and stimulants, until its digestive organs are ruined, so the stomach of the soul is often ruined by mental stimulants, such as novels, philosophy, and false doctrines, until the digestive power of faith is well-nigh destroyed.
Love is the blood of the spiritual life. When the food in the stomach has been digested, it resembles milk; then it is conveyed into the lungs, where it is cooked by the oxygen of the air, and becomes beautiful red blood; it is then poured into the heart, and the heart, like a steam-pump, throws it all over the body, to build up the wasted organs.
The same process is carried on in the soul. Truth is perceived by the intellect, digested by faith, and through the constant in-breathing of the Divine Spirit this digested truth is turned into love, which constitutes the very life and substance of the spiritual man. Every atom of the body is made out of blood. In like manner, the very body of the true Christian is made of love!
There is one more step in this analogy, and that is as to what is termed the stored-up substance of the body. The human body will subsist for some weeks on its stored-up substance, which is mysteriously concealed in the flesh. When the body goes without food, the heart and brain, which are vital centers, will consume the reserved forces of the body and draw the substance out of the flesh until the body becomes a skeleton. Many persons have wondered where the flesh went when people have no food. The answer is the flesh gradually turned back into blood again, and flows back to the heart and brain.
Memory is that power in the soul which corresponds to this stored-up substance. Hence, when a good, healthy soul cannot attend good, religious meetings, or hear spiritual instruction, or have deep, spiritual reading, it has to live by memory on the stored-up nourishment which it has previously received.
You may ask, "Does not such a soul still have access to God in prayer?" I answer, Yes. Prayer is the very breath of the spiritual life, and breath is more essential to life than anything else; but as the body lives on three things - air, water, food - so the soul lives on three things - namely, prayer, the Holy Spirit, and the periodic feeding on freshly-apprehended spiritual truth. And though the body can live a good while on air and water, yet, if denied food, it will die. In like manner the soul of the believer may live on prayer and the Holy Spirit, but if it is cut off from the understanding of appropriate spiritual truth, it will pine, and the life be greatly weakened. For this reason, the best Christian people need the help of good, religious meetings, of Bible instruction, and of spiritual reading.
3-ITS A LAW:
It is a law of all life to lay hold on foreign substances and turn them into itself. It is enough to make us stand in awe to watch the strange power which even the life of a plant has. The roots of every kind of plant or tree will seize upon the same gases and juices in the earth and transmute them into their several lives. The oak turns everything into oak, and out of the same substances the deadly nightshade turns everything into nightshade. The lamb converts the grass into lamb, and from the identical substances the wild ass builds up his life. The Omnipotent mechanism which intervenes between the one result and the other is simply a difference in the kind of life. This law holds true in spiritual life. The soul in which Satan reigns turns everything it eats into selfishness, and the soul which has been washed in Jesus' Blood and filled with the Christ-life will convert all that it eats into Christ-life. The same trials, bereavements, losses and sorrows which make one kind of life grow in fretting or in melancholy, or bitter and open rebellion, will make another kind of life grow in meekness and patient perseverance, and an inexpressible charity and sweetness of spirit. Everything depends on whether the self-life or the Christ-life has possession of us. There is a point in the Christian life where the whole being is so crucified and pervaded by the Holy Spirit, in spirit, soul, and body, that everything it comes in contact with, and every experience of joy and sorrow, and every treatment it receives from men or devils, becomes a means of Grace, and is turned into a mystical nourishment. There is such a thing as feeding on odors and outward bathings of milk and oil. It has been found that hungry persons get nourished by the smell of cooked food. Some winters ago the poor, hungry tramps of Chicago used to hang around the restaurants in such crowds that the police drove them away. Many of them testified that they desired to smell the odor of the cooked food, as it seemed to appease their hunger.
There is something analogous to this in the spiritual life. To a hungry soul there is an indescribable flavor and a mystical nourishment in good, spiritual singing, in being in the presence of good people, and even in looking in the face of a Spirit-filled person. A Christ- possessed soul has a mysterious, heavenly atmosphere around it, and this very atmosphere is electrified with a heavenly vigor.
The inner spirit of a perfect believer gets a nourishment out of the odors of Paradise; out of the majestic beauties of nature; out of the tender memories of the past; out of the flights of pure poetry; out of dreams and bright mental visions; out of storms and tempests, as sea- birds feed on the foam which the tempest churns out from the sea; out of the affinities of friendship; and even out of the antagonism of foes.
Oh, blessed be God for that all-devouring vortex of love which grinds grist from life OR death, from nature, grace, or glory, into that fine flour out of which angel's food is cooked! A soul in such a state will not only find food for itself out of every opening flower of grace and providence, but it will be a food-bearer to other hungry souls!
NOW HEAR THIS (MUSIC): 
