Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant,
else Nature's injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a
slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and
refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning's sun, and makes us
cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in
her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace
ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.--_Mainwaring._
Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all
other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the
perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor
can such always look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond
the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually
attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:--
"And Hope, like the rainbow of summer,
Gives a promise of Lethe at last."
If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope
of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain
it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.
The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out
the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the
quantity of his stock--his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his
swine,--and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,--man, created but a
little below the angels,--is man an exception to this rule, that he should
cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?
Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.
God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced
them "good," hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative
duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the
inestimable boon of the Almighty.
It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of
his Maker.
From Adam to the flood--a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen
hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers--the average of man's
years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had
dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we
read, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." From actual
statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore
and ten years.
And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and
Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?
The Psalmist above quoted says further, "and if by reason of _strength_
they be fourscore years," etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and
weakness--reversing the matter--shortens our days.
Let us begin at the beginning.