Health of mind and body, next to a good conscience, is the best blessing our Maker can give us, and to no one is it more immediately valuable than to the laboring man and his wife and children; and indeed a good conscience is just moral health, the wholeness of the sense and the organ of duty; for let us never forget that there is a religion of the body, as well as, and greatly helpful of, the religion of the soul. We are to glorify God in our souls and in our bodies, for the best of all reasons, because they are his, and to remember that at last we must give account, not only of our thoughts and spiritual desires and acts, but all the deeds done in our body. A husband who, in the morning before going to his work, would cut his right hand off sooner than injure the wife of his bosom, strangles her that same night when mad with drink; that is a deed done in his body, and truly by his body, for his judgment is gone; and for that he must give an account when his name is called; his judgment was gone; but then, as the child of a drunken murderer said to me, "A' but, sir, wha goned it?" I am not a teetotaler. I am against teetotalism as a doctrine of universal application; I think we are meant to use these things as not abusing them,—this is one of the disciplines of life; but I not the less am sure that drunkenness ruins men's bodies,—it is not for me to speak of souls,—is a greater cause of disease and misery, poverty, crime, and death among the laboring men and women of our towns, than consumption, fever, cholera, and all their tribe, with thieving and profligacy and improvidence thrown into the bargain: these slay their thousands; this its tens of thousands. Do you ever think of the full meaning of "he's the waur o' drink?" How much the waur?—and then "dead drunk,"—"mortal." Can there be anything more awfully significant than these expressions you hear from children in the streets?
You will see in the woodcut a good illustration of the circulation of the blood: both that through our lungs, by which we breathe and burn, and that through the whole body, by which we live and build. That hand grasps the heart, the central depot, with its valves opening out and in, and, by its contraction and relaxation, makes the living fluid circulate everywhere, carrying in strength, life, and supply to all, and carrying off waste and harm. None of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand as His who makes, supports, moves, and governs all things,—that hand which, while it wheels the rolling worlds, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young, and which was once nailed for "our advantage on the bitter cross."
J. B.
23 Rutland Street,
December 16, 1861.
CONTENTS.
| Page | |||
| [Preface] | 7 | ||
| SERMON | [I.] | The Doctor: our Duties to him | 15 |
| [II.] | The Doctor: his Duties to you | 29 | |
| [III.] | Children, and how to guide them | 41 | |
| [IV.] | Health | 56 | |
| [V.] | Medical Odds and Ends | 71 |
