Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People Part 2

Be always frank and open with your children. Make them trust you and tell you all their secrets. Make them feel at ease with you, and make _free_ with them. There is no such good plaything for grown-up children like you and me as _weans_, wee ones. It is wonderful what you can get them to do with a little coaxing and fun. You all know this as well as I do, and you all practise it every day in your own families. Here is a pleasant little story out of an old book. "A gentleman having led a company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to get weary, and all cried to him to carry them on his back, but because of their mult.i.tude he could not do this. 'But,' says he, 'I'll get horses for us all'; then cutting little wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, and a great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle in their little legs, and they rode cheerily home." So much for a bit of ingenious fun.

One thing, however poor you are, you can give your children, and that is your prayers, and they are, if real and humble, worth more than silver or gold,--more than food and clothing, and have often brought from our Father who is in heaven, and hears our prayers, both money and meat and clothes, and all worldly good things. And there is one thing you can always teach your child; you may not yourself know how to read or write, and therefore you may not be able to teach your children how to do these things; you may not know the names of the stars or their geography, and may therefore not be able to tell them how far you are from the sun, or how big the moon is; nor be able to tell them the way to Jerusalem or Australia, but you may always be able to tell them who made the stars and numbered them, and you may tell them the road to heaven. You may always teach them to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out to see the mother of a little child. She was very dangerously ill, and the nurse had left the child to come and help me. I went up to the nursery to get some hot water, and in the child's bed I saw something raised up. This was the little fellow under the bedclothes kneeling. I said, "What are you doing?" "I am praying G.o.d to make mamma better," said he. G.o.d likes these little prayers and these little people,--for of such is the kingdom of heaven. These are his little ones, his lambs, and he hears their cry; and it is enough if they only lisp their prayers. "Abba, Father," is all he needs; and our prayers are never so truly prayers as when they are most like children's in simplicity, in directness, in perfect fulness of reliance. "They pray right up," as black Uncle Tom says in that wonderful book, which I hope you have all read and wept over.

I forgot to speak about punishing children. I am old-fashioned enough to uphold the ancient practice of warming the young bottoms with some sharpness, if need be; it is a wholesome and capital application, and does good to the bodies, and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it is far less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, and keeping up a grudge at their children. Warm the bott, say I, and you will warm the heart too; and all goes right.

And now I must end. I have many things I could say to you, but you have had enough of me and my bairns, I am sure. Go home, and when you see the little curly pows on their pillows, sound asleep, pour out a blessing on them, and ask our Saviour to make them his; and never forget what we began with, that they came from G.o.d, and are going back to him, and let the light of eternity fall upon them as they lie asleep, and may you resolve to dedicate them and yourselves to him who died for them and for us all, and who was once himself a little child, and sucked the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a woman, and who said that awful saying, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it had been better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the midst of the sea."

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 G.o.d, 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 our 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 n.o.body to whom health is so valuable, is worth so much, as the poor laboring 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 you,--it would be so much out of your pocket? And don't you see that G.o.d 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,--G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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, G.o.d 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; laborers 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 G.o.d'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 die from drinking, and from following other evil courses. There is no life so hard, none in which the poor body comes so badly off, and is made so miserable, as the life of a drunkard or a dissolute man. I need hardly tell you, that this cause of death and disease you can all avoid.

I don't say it is easy for any man in your circ.u.mstances to keep from sin; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says so, and that there are no temptations to drinking. You are much less to blame for doing this than people who are better off; but you CAN keep from drinking, and you know as well as I do, how much better and happier, and healthier and richer and more respectable you will be if you do so. 4thly and lastly. Disease and death are often brought on from ignorance, from not knowing what are called the _laws of health_,--those easy, plain, common things which, if you do, you will live long, and which, if you do not do, you will die soon.

Now, I would like to make a few simple statements about this to you; and I will take the body bit by bit, and tell you some things that you should know and do in order to keep this wonderful house that your soul lives in, and by the deeds done in which you will one day be judged,--and which is G.o.d's gift and G.o.d's handiwork,--clean and comfortable, hale, strong, and hearty; for you know that, besides doing good to ourselves and our family and our neighbors with our bodily labor, we are told that we should glorify G.o.d in our bodies as well as in our souls, for they are his, more his than ours,--he has bought them by the blood of his Son Jesus Christ. We are not our own, we are bought with a price; therefore ought we to glorify G.o.d with our souls and with our bodies, which are his.

Now, first, for _the skin_. You should take great care of it, for on its health a great deal depends; keep it clean, keep it warm, keep it dry, give it air; have a regular scrubbing of all your body every Sat.u.r.day night; and, if you can manage it, you should every morning wash not only your face, but your throat and breast, with cold water, and rub yourself quite dry with a hard towel till you glow all over. You should keep your hair short if you are men; it saves you a great deal of trouble and dirt.

Then, the inside of your _head_,--you know what is inside your head,--your brain; you know how useful it is to you. The cleverest pair of hands among you would be of little use without brains: they would be like a body without a soul, a watch with the mainspring broken. Now, you should consider what is best for keeping the brain in good trim. One thing of great consequence is _regular sleep, and plenty of it_. Every man should have at the least eight hours in his bed every four-and-twenty hours, and let him sleep all the time if he can; but even if he lies awake it is a rest to his wearied brain, as well as to his wearied legs and arms. _Sleep is the food of the brain._ Men may go mad and get silly, if they go long without sleep. Too much sleep is bad; but I need hardly warn you against that, or against too much meat. You are in no great danger from these.

Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating liquors in excess are just so much poison to the brain. I need not say much about this, you all know it; and we all know what dreadful things happen when a man poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink; he may murder his wife, or his child, and when he comes to himself he knows nothing of how he did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he _did_ do it, and that he may be hanged for doing something when he was mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in his senses: but then he knows that he made himself mad, and he must take all the wretched and tremendous consequences.

From the brains we go to the _lungs_,--you know where they are,--they are what the butchers call the _lichts_; here they are, they are the bellows that keep the fire of life going; for you must know that a clever German philosopher has made out that we are all really burning,--that our bodies are warmed by a sort of burning or combustion, as it is called,--and fed by breath and food, as a fire is fed with coals and air.

Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh air, and plenty of room to play in. About seventy thousand people die every year in Britain from that disease of the lungs called consumption,--that is, nearly half the number of people in the city of Edinburgh; and it is certain that more than the half of these deaths could be prevented if the lungs had fair play. So you should always try to get your houses well ventilated, that means to let the air be often changed, and free from impure mixtures; and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and be careful to keep everything clean, and put away all filth; for filth is not only disgusting to the eye and the nose, but is dangerous to the health. I have seen a great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by dying people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I have always found that where the air was bad, the rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which G.o.d sends upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely destructive. Believe this, and go home and consider well what I now say, for you may be sure it is true.

Now we come to the _heart_. You all know where it is. It is the most wonderful little pump in the world. There is no steam-engine half so clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in every one of us, beat, beating,--all day and all night, year after year, never stopping, like a watch ticking; only it never needs to be wound up,--G.o.d winds it up once for all. It depends for its health on the state of the rest of the body, especially the brains and lungs. But all violent pa.s.sions, all irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk, falling asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night,--this often brings on disease of the heart; and you know it is not only dangerous to have anything the matter with the heart, it is the commonest of all causes of sudden death. It gives no warning; you drop down dead in a moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the moral organ, "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

We now come to the _stomach_. You all know, I dare say, where it lies!

It speaks for itself. Our friends in England are very respectful to their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, and we make too little.

If an Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach; if an Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he's "kilt entirely"; and if a Scotsman, it is in his "heed." Now, I wish I saw Scots men and women as nice and particular about their stomachs, or rather about what they put into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we may put in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior:--

"The plainest man alive may tell ye The seat of empire is the Belly: From hence are sent out those supplies, Which make us either stout or wise; The strength of every other member Is founded on your Belly-timber; The qualms or raptures of your blood Rise in proportion to your food, Your stomach makes your fabric roll, Just as the bias rules the bowl: That great Achilles might employ The strength designed to ruin Troy, He dined on lions' marrow, spread On toasts of ammunition bread; But by his mother sent away, Amongst the Thracian girls to play, Effeminate he sat and quiet; Strange product of a cheese-cake diet.

Observe the various operations, Of food and drink in several nations.

Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel, Upon the strength of water-gruel?

But who shall stand his rage and force, If first he rides, then eats his horse!

Salads and eggs, and lighter fare, Turn the Italian spark's guitar; And if I take Dan Congreve right, Pudding and beef make Britons fight."

Good cooking is the beauty of a dinner. It really does a man as much good again if he eats his food with a relish, and with a little attention, it is as easy to cook well as ill. And let me tell the wives, that your husbands would like you all the better, and be less likely to go off to the public-house, if their bit of meat or their drop of broth were well cooked. Laboring men should eat well. They should, if possible, have meat--_butcher-meat_--ever day. Good broth is a capital dish. But, above all, keep whiskey out of your stomachs; it really plays the very devil when it gets in. It makes the brain mad, it burns the coats of the stomach; it turns the liver into a lump of rottenness; it softens and kills the heart; it makes a man an idiot and a brute. If you really need anything stronger than good meat, take a pot of wholesome porter or ale; but I believe you are better without even that. You will be all the better able to afford good meat, and plenty of it.

With regard to your _bowels_,--a very important part of your interior,--I am not going to say much, except that neglect of them brings on many diseases; and laboring men are very apt to neglect them.

Many years ago, an odd old man, at Green-c.o.c.k, left at his death a number of sealed packets to his friends, and on opening them they found a Bible, 50, and a box of pills, and the words, "Fear G.o.d, and keep your bowels open." It was good advice, though it might have been rather more decorously worded. If you were a doctor, you would be astonished how many violent diseases of the mind, as well as of the body, are produced by irregularity of the bowels. Many years ago, an old minister, near Linlithgow, was wakened out of his sleep to go to see a great lady in the neighborhood who was thought dying, and whose mind was in dreadful despair, and who wished to see him immediately. The old man, rubbing his eyes, and pushing up his Kilmarnock nightcap, said, "And when were her leddyship's booels opened?" And finding, after some inquiry, that they were greatly in arrears, "I thocht sae. Rax me ower that pill-box on the chimney-piece, and gie my compliments to Leddy Margret, and tell her to tak thae twa pills, and I'll be ower by and by mysel'." They did as he bade them. They did their duty, and the pills did theirs, and her leddyship was relieved, and she was able at breakfast-time to profit by the Christian advice of the good old man, which she could not have done when her nerves were all wrong. The old Greeks, who were always seeking after wisdom, and didn't always find it, showed their knowledge and sense in calling depression of mind Melancholy, which means black bile. Leddy Margret's liver, I have no doubt, had been distilling this perilous stuff.

My dear friends, there is one thing I have forgot to mention, and that is about keeping common-stairs clean; you know they are often abominably filthy, and they aggravate fever, and many of your worst and most deadly diseases; for you may keep your own houses never so clean and tidy, but if the common-stair is not kept clean too, all its foul air comes into your rooms, and into your lungs, and poisons you. So let all in the stair resolve to keep it clean, and well aired.

But I must stop now. I fear I have wearied you. You see I had nothing new to tell you. The great thing in regulating and benefiting human life, is not to find out new things, but to make the best of the old things,--to live according to Nature, and the will of Nature's G.o.d,--that great Being who bids us call him our Father, and who is at this very moment regarding each one of us with far more than any earthly father's compa.s.sion and kindness, and who would make us all happy if we would but do his bidding, and take his road. He has given us minds by which we may observe the laws he has ordained in our bodies, and which are as regular and as certain in their effects, and as discoverable by us as the motions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens; and we shall not only benefit ourselves and live longer and work better and be happier, by knowing and obeying these laws, from love to ourselves, but we shall please him, we shall glorify him, and make him our _Friend_,--only think of that! and get his blessing, by taking care of our health, from love to him, and a regard to his will, in giving us these bodies of ours to serve him with, and which he has, with his own almighty hands, so fearfully and wonderfully made.

I hope you will pardon my plainness in speaking to you. I am quite in earnest, and I have a deep regard, I may say a real affection, for you; for I know you well. I spent many of my early years as a doctor in going about among you. I have attended you long ago when ill; I have delivered your wives, and been in your houses when death was busy with you and yours, and I have seen your fort.i.tude, energy, and honest, hearty, generous kindness to each other; your readiness to help your neighbors with anything you have, and to share your last sixpence and your last loaf with them. I wish I saw half as much real neighborliness and sympathy among what are called your betters. If a poor man falls down in a fit on the street, who is it that takes him up and carries him home, and gives him what he needs? it is not the man with a fine coat and gloves on,--it is the poor, dirty-coated, hard-handed, warm-hearted laboring man.

Keep a good hold of all these homely and st.u.r.dy virtues, and add to them temperance and diligence, cleanliness and thrift, good knowledge, and, above all, the love and the fear of G.o.d, and you will not only be happy yourselves, but you will make this great and wonderful country of ours which rests upon you still more wonderful and great.

SERMON V.

MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS.

My dear friends,--We are going to ring in now, and end our course. I will be sorry and glad, and you will be the same. We are this about everything. It is the proportion that settles it. I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and I dare say on the whole you are not glad. I dislike parting with anything or anybody I like, for it is ten to one if we meet again.

My text is, "_That His way may he known upon earth; His saving health to all nations._" You will find it in that perfect little Psalm, the 67th.

But before taking it up, I will, as my dear father used to say,--you all remember him, his keen eye and voice; his white hair, and his grave, earnest, penetrating look; and you should remember and possess his Canongate Sermon to you,--"The Bible, what it is, what it does, and what it deserves,"--well, he used to say, let us _recapitulate_ a little. It is a long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one that we have.

He made it longer, but not less alive, by turning it into "a few recapitulatory remarks." What ground then have we travelled over?

_First_, our duties to and about the Doctor; to call him in time, to trust him, to obey him, to be grateful to, and to pay him with our money and our hearts and our good word, if we have all these; if we have not the first, with twice as much of the others. _Second_, the Doctor's duties to us. He should be able and willing to cure us. That is what he is there for. He should be sincere, attentive, and tender to us, keeping his time and our secrets. We must tell him all we know about our ailments and their causes, and he must tell us all that is good for us to know, and no more. _Third_, your duties to your children; to the wee Willie Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin' hame. It is your duty to _mind_ them. It is a capital Scotch use of this word: they are to be in your mind; you are to exercise your understanding about them; to give them simple food; to keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whiskey, away from their tender mouths and stomachs; to give them that never-ending meal of good air, night and day, which is truly food and fire to them and you; to _be_ good before as well as to them, to speak and require the truth in love,--that is a wonderful expression, isn't it?--the truth in love; that, if acted on by us all, would bring the millennium next week; to be plain and homely with them, never _spaining_ their minds from you. You are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to spain their mouths; it is a dreadful business that to both parties; but there is a spaining of the affections still more dreadful, and that need never be, no, never, neither in this world nor in that which is to come.

Dr. Waugh, of London, used to say to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted, for that simplest of all reasons, because they were not, after giving them G.o.d's words of comfort, clapping them on the shoulders, and fixing his mild deep eyes on them (those who remember those eyes well know what they could mean), "My woman, your bairn is where it will have two fathers, but never but one mother."

You should also, when the time comes, explain to your children what about their own health and the ways of the world they ought to know, and for the want of the timely knowledge of which many a life and character has been lost. Show them, moreover, the value you put upon health, by caring for your own.

Do your best to get your sons well married, and soon. By "well married,"

I mean that they should pair off old-fashionedly, for love, and marry what deserves to be loved, as well as what is lovely. I confess I think falling in love is the best way to begin; but then the moment you fall, you should get up and look about you, and see how the land lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. I don't like walking into love, or being carried into love; or, above all, being sold or selling yourself into it, which, after all, is not it. And by "soon," I mean as soon as they are keeping themselves; for a wife, such a wife as alone I mean, is cheaper to a young man than no wife, and is his best companion.

Then for your duties to yourselves. See that you make yourself do what is _immediately_ just to your body, feed it when it is really hungry; let it sleep when it, not its master, desires sleep; make it happy, poor hard-working fellow! and give it a gambol when it wants it and deserves it, and as long as it can execute it. Dancing is just the music of the feet, and the gladness of the young legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is like all other natural pleasures, given to be used, and to be not abused, either by yourself or by those who don't like it, and don't enjoy your doing it,--shabby dogs these, beware of them! And if this be done, it is a good and a grace, as well as pleasure, and satisfies some good end of our being, and in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did you ever see anything in this world more beautiful than the lambs running races and dancing round the big stone of the field; and does not your heart get young when you hear,--

"Here we go by Jingo ring, Jingo ring, Jingo ring; Here we go by Jingo ring, About the merry ma tanzie."