Greetings! In our previous class, we learned that everything from vitamins, light, and electricity is operating by the will of God. In today’s study we shall investigate further and discover what is the secret of life.
Picking right back from our previous class, Dr. Arthur H. Compton expresses similar sentiments to Dr. Whitney, “The world is beautiful to the scientist, who is opening new vistas continually. The molecules made from atoms, the atoms made from electrons and protons, show the universe within a universe. And a God who can control a universe like that is mighty beyond imagination.
If a scientist is to have a God, he must take the God of Newton. He must understand that the mechanical laws believed by other and earlier scientists to be sufficient in themselves are but expressions of His desires…We have had this world of nature presented before us, and its Ruler must be great beyond our comprehension. The present-day scientist is rapidly coming to the point of view that there is a God and a creative Intelligence back of the world….The physicists’ problem of reconstructing the atom points to a tremendous Intelligence back of creation. We cannot ascribe the properties of the atom to chance. Chance could not create the atom any more than it could a salad.”
Dr. Whitney took us into the field of electricity and light which pervade the universe. Dr. Compton directed our attention to the composition of matter all around and within us. We shall now let a medical man speak of the forces of life within us.
A Medical Scientist Speaks of God
Dr. Richard C. Cabot, dean of Boston physicians, is another celebrated scientist who believes that the mysterious processes going on within the body are the work of God. At a meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society, speaking of ‘the healing power of nature,’ he said:
‘But what is Nature? What are the characteristics of this power? The first is that it has superhuman wisdom….Where does this come from? Where do we get the healing substances in our tissues?…I do not see why we should not call it by its natural name….It is perfectly obvious that it is God; it is the power of God on which each one here depends today for the fact that he is here instead of being underneath the earth….There is no reason, then, so far as we can see, why doctors should be afraid of the simple old-fashioned word, God. The medical profession has learned in studying disease more about the meaning of this word than the vast majority of the so-called religious people. Why not tell this truth, because it is true?‘
Inasmuch as these great scientists thus recognize God in their respective fields and attribute every unexplainable phenomenon to a greater infinite living Creator, we should feel free to say that these partially understood vitamins are in some way associated with life and are used by the Almighty to maintain it.
Life Comes Only From Life
Let us pursue this study of life a little further. We behold the bean and watch the mysteries of the growth of the 
sprout and the plant and blossom and on to the development of another crop of beans. As I hold an apparently lifeless bean in my hand I say, Give me the mystery of the life within you. Where did you get it? If the bean could talk it would say, I got it from my mother bean which you planted last year! But whence the life that was in that bean of a year ago? Oh, from the generation before. And so on and on until I go back to a day in remote antiquity when someone made the first bean and put within it that mysterious thing we call “life” and gave it power to continue to impart that life to succeeding generations of beans as long as time should last, if to all eternity!
And thus it is in all animals. Go out on the farm and ask the frisky calf, Where did you get that life that makes you so blithe and happy? He says, From my mother cow. But where did mother cow get her life? Oh, from her mother. And, as with the bean, so with the cow, we will go back and back through many generations of cows until we come to the time when the first cow and her mate were made and life was put into them and they were commanded to reproduce themselves and pass on that life to countless succeeding generations as long as time should last. And that life can be sustained only by the constant partaking of a fresh supply of the life principles which the same Creator maintains in all vegetation.
And thus it is with man. I take a babe in my arms and say, Where did you get your life? He will say, From my 
mother. But where did mother get her life? Oh, from her mother. And so again we must go back through all the generations of man until we reach the day when the Creator made the first man and woman and placed life within them and commanded them to pass it on to the succeeding generations as long as time should last. And the continuance of that life has been made to depend in a great degree upon a constant fresh supply of that life principle in plants which the scientist has called the Vitamin. Since when was it thus? Let the evolutionist tell if he can. Thus it has been since the world began. Life comes only from life.
Therefore the secret of life is life, the ceaseless gift of God! Please understand that these things we are saying are not remote from the study of foods because the Creator has place minute quantities of certain elements vital to life within our food, and these are a part of His plan to sustain life in animals and human beings. It is necessary that we secure them.
Although we would direct your attention first to the fact that all vitamins are found in natural foods, we must not neglect to give you some specific information about certain ones and their functions and sources, that the proper emphasis may be placed upon them and you make sure that you secure them.
As the chemical composition of some of the vitamins has been learned, there is a growing tendency to discontinue designating them by letters and to name them somewhat according to their elements so that today we find both methods of designation in use. Interested in learning the anatomy and physiology of vitamins? Join us in our next study and we shall begin with Vitamin A!
*This study is adapted from the book, Abundant Health by Julius G. White