SERMON IV.

HEALTH.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,-I am going to give you a sort of sermon about your health,—and you know a sermon has always a text; so, though I am only a doctor, I mean to take a text for ours, and I will choose it, as our good friends the ministers do, from that best of all books, the Bible. Job ii. 4: ‘All that a man hath will he give for his life.'

This, you know, was said many thousands of years ago by the devil, when, like a base and impudent fellow, as he always was and is, he came into the presence of the great God, along with the good angels. Here, for once in his life, the devil spoke the truth and shamed himself.

What he meant, and what I wish you now seriously to consider, is, that a man—you or I— will lose anything sooner than life; we would give everything for it, and part with all the money, everything we had, to keep away death

and to lengthen our days. If you had 500 in a box at home, and knew that you would certainly be dead by to-morrow unless you gave the £500, would you ever make a doubt about what you would do? Not you! And if you were told that if you got drunk, or worked too hard, or took no sort of care of your bodily health, you would turn ill to-morrow and die next week, would you not keep sober, and work more moderately, and be more careful of yourself?

Now, I want to make you believe that you are too apt to do this very same sort of thing in your daily life, only that instead of to-morrow or next week, your illness and your death comes next year, or, at any rate, some years sooner than otherwise. But your death is actually preparing already, and that by your own hands, by your own ignorance, and often by your own foolish and sinful neglect and indulgence. A decay or rottenness spreads through the beams of a house, unseen and unfeared, and then, by and by down it comes, and is utterly destroyed. So it is with your bodies. You plant, by sin and neglect and folly, the seeds of disease by your own hands; and as surely as the harvest comes after the seed-time, so will you reap the harvest of pain, and misery, and death. And remember there is nobody to whom health is so valuable, is worth so much, as to the poor labouring man; it is his stock-in-trade, his wealth, his capital; his bodily strength and skill are the main

things he can make his living by, and therefore he should take better care of his body and its health than a rich man; for a rich man may be laid up in his bed for weeks and months, and yet his business may go on, for he has means to pay his men for working under him, or he may be what is called 'living on his money.' But if a poor man takes fever, or breaks his leg, or falls into a consumption, his wife and children soon want food and clothes; and many a time do I see on the streets poor, careworn men, dying by inches of consumption, going to and from their work, when, poor fellows, they should be in their beds; and all this just because they cannot afford to be ill and to lie out of work,-they cannot spare the time and the wages.

Now, don't you think, my dear friends, that it is worth your while to attend to your health? If you were a carter or a coach-driver, and had a horse, would you not take care to give him plenty of corn, and to keep his stable clean and well aired, and to curry his skin well, and you would not kill him with overwork, for besides the cruelty, this would be a dead loss to youit would be so much out of your pocket? And don't you see that God has given you your bodies to work with, and to please Him with their diligence; and it is ungrateful to Him, as well as unkind and wicked to your family and yourself, to waste your bodily strength, and bring disease

and death upon yourselves? But you will say, 'How can we make a better of it? We live from hand to mouth; we can't have fine houses and warm clothes, and rich food and plenty of it.' No, I know that; but if you have not a fine house, you may always have a clean one, and fresh air costs nothing-God gives it to all his children without stint,—and good plain clothes, and meal, may now be had cheaper than ever.

Health is a word that you all have some notion of, but you will perhaps have a clearer idea of it when I tell you what the word comes from. Health was long ago wholth, and comes from the word whole or hale. The Bible says, They that are whole need not a physician;' that is, healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, a man is whole when, like a bowl or any vessel, he is entire, and has nothing broken about him; he is like a watch that goes well, neither too fast nor too slow. But you will perhaps say, "You doctors should be able to put us all to rights, just as a watchmaker can clean and sort a watch; if you can't, what are you worth?' But the difference between a man and a watch is, that you must try to mend the man when he is going. You can't stop him and then set him agoing; and, you know, it would be no joke to a watchmaker, or to the watch, to try and clean it while it was going. But God, who does everything like Himself, with his own perfectness, has

put inside each of our bodies a Doctor of his own making-one wiser than we with all our wisdom. Every one of us has in himself a power of keeping and setting his health right. If a man is overworked, God has ordained that he desires rest, and that rest cures him. If he lives in a damp, close place, free and dry air cures him. If he eats too much, fasting cures him. If his skin is dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap will put him all to rights.

What we call disease or sickness, is the opposite of health, and it comes on us-1st, By descent from our parents. It is one of the surest of all legacies; if a man's father and mother are diseased, naturally or artificially, he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. 2dly, Hard work brings on disease, and some kinds of work more than others. Masons who hew often fall into consumption; labourers get rheumatism, or what you call the pains;' painters get what is called their colic, from the lead in the paint, and so on. In a world like ours, this set of causes of disease and ill health cannot be altogether got the better of; and it was God's command, after Adam's sin, that men should toil and sweat for their daily bread; but more than the half of the bad effects of hard work and dangerous employments might be prevented by a little plain knowledge, attention, and common sense. 3dly, Sin, wickedness, foolish and excessive pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands