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THE
RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HEALTH.
A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
LONDON,
NOVEMBER 20th, 1881,
Dr. ANDREW WILSON,
OF EDINBURGH.
LONDON :
11,
SOUTH
PRICE
PLACE FINSBURY.
TWOPENCE.
�FREDERICK G. HICKSON & Co.,
257, High Holbokn,
Rondon, W.C.
�THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HEALTH.
T T would be hard to find a truer allegory than the
“ Vision of Mirza,” in which Addison, under a
poetic guise, sought to teach the nature and incidents of
the journey of life. The long series of arches, threescore-years-and-ten entire, and several broken, in the
bridge of life ; the hidden trap-doors that were plentiful
at the entrance of life’s journey, and that again increased
towards life’s close ; the busy multitudes thronging life’s
highway ; the thinning of their ranks as their pilgrimage
progressed ; and the disappearance of unit after unit into
the dark river below as the journey’s stages lengthened,
are features of the allegory which form part of childhood’s
more serious tales. But beneath the clouds of allegory
and metaphor, lie the serious facts of human existence.
Wrap up these facts as you will, disguise them under
what 'simile you choose, their stern realities will still
face us, as we turn from the ideal to survey the fields of
human culture that are spread out everywhere around us.
There are few of these fields more impressive in the pic
ture they present to view than the special aspects which
meet the eye of the physician, the sanitaiy lefoimei, the
scientific man, the statistician himself. Of all the couises
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and phases of human life, none possess for us all such an
interest as those which deal with the chances of life, or
with the possibilities and probabilities of death. It is a
study, this, of the course life has to run, of the best course
which can be run, of the highest goal physical develop
ment can attain. It is a topic, this of health, which presents
for the nation an interest not exceeded by questions of the
deepest political importance. You may applaud the
statesman who introduces amid, it may be, violent oppo
sition, some measure of political reform. You may
admire and reverence the reformer in religion and theo
logy who, with the ardour of a Paul and the eloquence of
a Chrysostom, enunciates a new creed, and, having the
courage of his opinions, seeks to make that creed a life.
You may pause breathless over the work of a general or
commander who has redeemed the fortune of a war which
seemed hopeless before he brought well-nigh superhuman
bravery and promptitude into the field of action. All
these varied aims and excellencies are the stepping-stones
of humanity’s march to better things. But I make bold
to say, your interest will be deeper still, when you listen
to the recital which deals with the labours of science to
prolong life; which recounts the dangers that surround
nations, communities and individuals alike; and which
endeavours to show how, in the newer lights
research is throwing on human existence, there is .to be
found a crown’of years and a length of days. Humanity,
at least, in its thinking and cultured side, is now contented
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and willing to be instructed in the things that constitute
our physical salvation. What science has to say concern
ing the prolongation of human life and of human opportu
nities through attention to the laws of health, is listened
to with increased attention as the years roll on. But there
is yet need that the high morality of the subject be recog
nized. There exists the need that the religious aspects of
the health question should be driven home anew to our
minds in the light of the freer and fuller atmosphere into
which we have passed. There is, above all, an urgent neces
sity that we should assist those who have not yet attained
to a high level of thought, who still linger in theological
Egypts with a Canaan before them wherein is safety and
peace, to realize how closely, nay, how inseparably bound
up with a man’s religion and creed, is his doctrine of
health and its attainment. It is in order to lay before you
this morning a few plain thoughts on its religious aspects,
that I have chosen such a subject as “ health.”
And it may tend in some measure to assist us in the
■work of bodily care and in the enjoyment of life, if we can
realize how closely and inseparably health and its concerns
merge into any rational creed of life and conduct that man
may construct.
It may not be out of place, if, by way of an introduction
to our thoughts, you briefly glance with me at a few facts
typical of the need that exists for health-knowledge.
Begin with the early stages of human life—with the
period of the dim awakening of the child to consciousness
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of a life and of a world external to itself. Statistics on thetruth of which you may rely, prove the verity of that
part of the vision of Mirza, wherein the early arches ofthebridge were studded with pitfalls innumerable. For,
out of every 1,000 children{born, no fewer than 149 die ere
the first year of life is attained. Before the fifth year of
life, 263 will have disappeared from the 1,000, like the
fleeting shadows of cloud-land. Let 25 years of age beattained, and no fewer than 366 of the 1,000 units will havedisappeared. At 45 years of age, exactly 500 remain ;
ten years later only 421 are to the fore. But 309 reach
65 years of age : and 75 years sees a remnant of 161.
About 38 of the 1,000 may see 85 years of age; only 2:
survive till 95 years ; and only 1 in every 1,000 born, lives
through an entire century. But few foofalls re-echo over
the later arches of the bridge of life ; and the longest
livers have but a solitary journey as life wanes to its.
close.
There is much food for reflection in such an exact
account of the fashion in which human units appear on,
and disappear from, the stage of time. How can we
estimate the value of the lives that are cut short, often
through unforeseen circumstances, but as often through,
human ignorance and through human inattention to the
laws of health. Who 'shall conceive the possibilities of
good, of work, of faith in humanity’s highest aims, to
which the lost units might have attained ? Who shall
say anything of the extinction of genius and mind which
�we owe every hour to the fate that is as often as not of
our own making ? What potential Raphaels, or Shakqspeares, or Newtons, have disappeared, and are
disappearing hour by hour from the world’s light through
the trap doors in life’s bridge that lead to Lethe’s dark
silent stream below ? Even viewed as a simple fact of
life, the death of the units as revealed by science causes a
strong sense of rebellious melancholy to arise in the mind.
For science warns us that a very large proportion of the
losses which humanity sustains are preventive losses. They
are the bad debts for which human life has literally nothing
to show. They are the dead losses which weight the profits,
of life so heavily for the survivors, and which leave behind
it may be, the sorrow and poverty, and the desolation and
misery, that know no alleviation while life lasts for the
survivors. If that be true which sanitarians tell us, thaf
120,000 lives are annually sacrificed in our midst by preventible diseases ; that these thousands are sent to an early
grave by the pestilence that stalks abroad at noonday,
when care and attention should have long ago imprisoned
and executed it, the morality of the health-question is no
longer a debatable theme. But, last and best of all, when
we come to know the great and saving truth, worth in its
way, the concentrated culture of centuries, that man literally
holds in his own hands, the power to work weal to his
physical self, it seems high time that our religious teacheis
should have something to say on the morals of health.
I think I make a perfectly just remark when I say that
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to convential theology, with its absurd and inane theories
of the nature and origin of disease, we owe a vast amount
of the stolid indifference and ignorance that prevail in
matters relating to health. If I am able to show that a
foolish and fossilized theology naturally tends to encourage
the spread of disease through its ideas of the causation of
illness, I may claim to thereby furnish the surest ground
for the converse view, namely, that a rational theology
should be the first step towards health-reform. Consider,
for a single moment, the prevalent conceptions of disease
and its origin. The mysticism of the middle ages still
invests the minds of the people, by giving to disease a
purely supernatural and occult origin. The epileptic fit
is the gift of God, equally with the typhoid fever. “ The
Lord chastens whom he loves,” and the fall of a bank which
lands you in beggary, and the scarlet fever that strips your
hearth of its child-tenants and hushes for ever the prattle
that made music in your ear, are equally the means
according to theology, whereby you are to be purified
through trials. No matter that common-sense may
whisper that God’s procedure is hard—unjustifiably,
cruelly hard on the innocent victims, and that a milder
discipline would have been more likely to have won your
heart to righteousness. You are not permitted to inquire at
all into the “ways of Providence;” you are simply to fold the
hands, when every sinew and fibre in your frame feels fit to
start out and to hew down the impious lie that you deserved
the blow which ew your heart’s blood through the death
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of the wife or child you loved so well. You are to say,
“ Thy will be done,” when you know the phrase is, under
the circumstances, but a devil’s shibboleth after all. You
are to go on knowing nothing, seeking no light; only
believing that somehow or other things will right them
selves, when, in your heart, you know that hope is crushed
out of you, and that your life henceforth is but a vain
dream. And so many'a weary soul whose dead is buried,
but whose sorrows are just born, awakens to find life for
a time—it may be till its end—a dismal blank; and the
pulses of humanity, which should throb with hope, but the
muffled drums that herald a march to the grave.
I say then, that the popular theology is a dread enemy
of health-reform. It is plainly so, because it recognises
but one source of disease, and that the capricious fiat of an
anthropomorphic deity, who afflicts the children of men
to-day in as erratic and varied a fashion as when, with the
varied nosology of a celestial college of physicians at com
mand, he rained plagues on Egypt, or afflicted Job in the
manner familiar to all interested in patriarchal troubles
and perplexities. If you reply that even popular theo
logy recognises the newer dispensation, I will answer
“ No thanks to the theologians.” If the pulpit now adopts
less of the tone which bids the pews simply to suffer and
recognise the theoretical hand of the avengei, that is be
cause rationalism is beginning to touch the people s heai t
and head, through the people’s health, and through the
plain lessons of disease. Even those advanced theologians,
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the “ peculiar people,” who found their medical practice
on the learned dictum of the Apostle Tames, do not trust
to prayer entirely, but utilize oil inunction—itself a form
of respectable medical treatment—in the cure of disease.
But even James is far ahead of the popular theology, which
in its spirit and in its practice likewise, bids you cultivate
the resignation of fatalism. “ The Lord gave, and the Lord
taketh away ” is the cant phrase that to honest ears sounds
like the cry of a savage to his fetish. When you reflect
that the typhoid fever that has cost you a life you ill
could spare to be snatched away from you, had its origin in
the bad drainage that could so readily be avoided or cured
—when you know that this epidemic might have been
avoided, or that disease arrested by early care—when you
begin to learn that the proper regulation of life means
life’s prolongation, and that we largely hold our lives in
our own hands—then, and only then, can you realise how
hollow the mockery, how utterly base and irreligious the
words that bid you regard as a gift and sign from heaven,
the disease that is of the earth earthy, and that you might
through the exercise of knowledge have avoided, or per
chance have cured. The stumble that ends in a broken
limb, is, not as a rule, regarded even by theology as having
originated in the clouds. The material cause of your
accident is, of course, as plain to demonstration, as is the
origin of the railway disaster that arises from the careless
ness of a pointsman or the defect of a signal. And the
same reasoning applies to the fever. To glorify the Deity
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that afflicts you with typhus fever, and to condemn the
pointsman that kills you, or the coachman who maims you
by careless driving, are two examples of prevalent incon
sistencies, which are as much the product of a primitive
theology as is the cant expression of the coroner’s jury
concerning “ the will of God.” There is an undercurrent
of strong common sense in the lines of Dryden which
found their contention on the natural nature of disease
and its cure : —
“ Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught;
The wise for cure on exercise depend,
God never made his work for man to mend.”
If the dicta and ideas of theology may be credited with
having tinctured the minds of men with the belief that in
the presence of disease they were literally at the mercy
of a capricious Deity, we may now profitably turn to the
consideration of those newer and higher opinions concern
ing health which the advance of culture—and of religious
culture especially—have evolved.
The growth of national opinions in the matter of health
has been perhaps slow, but the advance has been made with
the slowness of surety. When we reflect that the laws against
witchcraft were exercised little more than a hundred years
ago, it will not surprise us to learn that, as recently as
1853, the Presbytery of Edinburgh sustained a severe
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mental shock by the reply of Lord Palmerston (the then
Home Secretary) in answer to a request that he would
appoint a day of national humiliation and prayer as a means
of averting a threatened visitation of cholera. The Pres
bytery of the Scottish metropolis possessed at that time
but one idea of the nature of disease, and that was
evidently the idea of its being sent from heaven. The
lelations of cholera to the Deity were clear enough to the
minds of Lord Palmerston’s petitioners, if that relationship
might be scarcely apparent to other people. The know
ledge that cholera—which, as I speak, is killing off
Mahommedan pilgrims at the rate of five hundred a day
at Mecca—is the offspring of bad drainage and an infected
water-supply, was an old story in 1853 to sanitary
reformers, but it appeared to be knowledge unattainable
by the theological mind. The facts that, firstly, cholera,
like every other epidemic, depends for diffusion on certain
insanitary conditions, and that, secondly, by improving
these conditions we may stamp out the disease, did not
seem to lie within the knowledge of the Edinburgh
theologians in 1853, as, unfortunately, it seems to be
unknown information to multitudes around us to-day.
Steeped in sanitary and scientific ignorance, can we wonder
then, that theology should collectively ask the Home
Secretary to appoint a day for the express and practical
purpose of asking the Deity to perform a veritable miracle.
By prayer and “humiliation”—I confess, even as a Scotch
man, to be entirely ignorant of the presence or working
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of this latter tendency on “ fast days ” or at any other
periods—the Deity was to be asked to suspend the laws
which regulate the production of the fever-poison and
spread of the cholera-virus. For the sake of “ much
speaking/’ and in the face of filth, bad drainage, and
other conditions then rampant over the face of the
land, the angel of death was actually expected, as in
another Egypt, to spare the chosen from the scourge.
But the sound common-sense of Lord Palmerston gave the
death-blow to the impiety of the wish. “It did not
appear,” said his lordship, “ that a national fast would be
suitable to the circumstances of the present moment.”
And then, in a few scathing sentences, the Presbytery of
Edinburgh was “hoist with its own petard.” “The Maker
of the Universe,” said Lord Palmerston’s letter, “has
established certain laws of nature for the planet in which
we live, and the weal or woe of mankind depends upon
the observance or neglect of these laws. One of those
laws connects health with the absence of those gaseous
exhalations which proceed from overcrowded human
beings, or from decomposing substances, whether animal
or vegetable ; and those same laws render sickness the
almost inevitable consequence of exposure to those noxious
influences. But it has, at the same time, pleased Providence
to place it within the power of man to make such arrange
ments as will prevent or will disperse such exhalations as
to render them harmless, and it is the duty of man to
attend to those laws of nature, and to exert the facilities
�which Providence has thus given to man for his own
welfare.”
In words like these which deserve to be “writ large”
in every school, Lord Palmerston rebuked the folly of his
petitioners. He further told them that the cholera visita
tion for which the Presbytery proposed the remedy of
prayer, was simply “ an awful warning given to the people of
this realm that they had too much neglected their duty in
this respect, and that those persons with whom it rested to
purify towns and cities, and to prevent or remove the
causes of disease, had not been sufficiently active in regard
to such matters.” He added that if the causes of con
tagion were “ allowed to remain,” they would “ infallibly
breed pestilence and be fruitful in death, in spite of all the
prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation.”
It is indeed cheering for rational minds to read words
like these, not merely because they breathe the spirit of
the soundest scientific policy of health, but because they
are impregnated with what I take’ to be the spirit of true
religion, which ever enforces the precept that man is the
minister of his own salvation, and which render more true
the poet's words—
“ There’s life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.”
The standpoint of the rational mind in regard to
health is simply this—that its preservation is the
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highest duty of mankind. This much and nothing less,
will satisfy the mind that contemplates the phases
of modern life and that longs for a better world
through the improvement of the environments of
human life in the present one. Look abroad for a moment
on the seething tides of humanity that ebb and flow with
ceaseless activity in your great city. Contemplate, as
casually as you will, the course of life to the men and
women we know, and from them extend your thoughts to
the toilers and moilers whose health is, at once, their only
possession and their best stock-in-trade. Observe how,
on every hand, you see the results of wasted 'existences
and broken lives. There, it is the ruin of a home which
might* have resounded with the laughter of children, or
have been blest with the love of wife or husband, bereft
of its sunshine, through, it may be, the gross carelessness
of the builder, or the combined ignorance and dishonesty
of the artisan who fabricated its drainage-works. Tell
the mind, however orthodox, that all is well with it, when
it has just been taught the bitter lesson that the deadly
poison that crept into its home and blighted a life, was,
like the escaped felon, an intruder which demanded con
tinual confinement through ordinary precautions, and do
not wonder if such a mind throws back your consolation
in your teeth, as but the vainest mockery that ever sprung
om a lie. There, again, is an individual constitution
which, born into the world weakly and undermined,
carries to an early grave the legacy of disease it
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inherited from parents who should never have been
allowed to bear that holy name. Here, it is another,
who, starting life in the full flush of vigour, under
mines health by excess. Knowing no laws of conduct
save those which made the enjoyment of the hour the
raison d'etre of life, the powers of that life have been sapped
and undermined by the vicious and insensible folly of halfa-dozen years. Or, again, you witness women and men
bowing before the Moloch of Fashion, and prostrating
themselves beneath the wheels of a fate that will crush
them as surely as the car of Juggernaut demolishes the
votaries who willingly bestrew its path. Is there any
need to emphasize from this pulpit what every pulpit
should denounce, namely, the wholesale bartering of
health for fashion ; the seeking of living bread amongst
the stones and the dust; the expecting to gather the pure
fruit of a healthy life from the foul weeds and thistles that
fringe the waysides of modern life ? Is there any require
ment that I should tell you what you know as well as I
do, that for vanity of figure, the human race will distort its
spine and flatten its chest; will convert the glorious
symmetry of the human body into a living museum of
pathological specimens ; and will cramp its feet until the
extremes of Chinese barbarity and western civilization
meet in amicable proximity ? There is no need to con
tinue the list of social and personal enormities which as a
nation we daily perpetrate. There might be added to the
indictment, crimes against health in the shape of luxurious
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living that is certain to bring a not over-hardy reward in
a shortened life ; and I could emphasize, if need be, the
still greater crime of sins of wilful neglect and omission
in that we have failed to know the great laws of health,
and knowing these laws, to follow and obey them. But
the facts of ill-health are every day facts : they meet us in
our homes; they teach us often in the persons of our
dearest and nearest ones, the baneful effects of carelessness,
and the often irreparable result of a wanton trifling with
health. Nay, still worse, the facts of unsound bodies and
of careless living, face you, and face me as to-day we meet
here to renew the forces of our mental and religious life.
The wasted opportunity of discharging life’s duty ; the
failure of our duty to our neighbour, to our kinsman,
and to ourselves ; the taxation of others for our
helplessness ; the falling short of every ideal, the hopes of
attaining which made life’s start so bright—in a word the
moral and religious wreck of thousands of lives, is a matter
at first of simple health, and indeed may be throughout all,
the consequence of the first shipwreck on the quicksands
of easily avoided disease. My friends, if there be a personal
Deity, who, with a pitying mind, or with some emotion akin
to that which forces the tear of sympathy to the human
eye, looks down from His mercy seat on the wrecked lives
of His children, there can be no pain, no emotion, no
feeling, half so strong in all the range of the divine com
passion, as that which the sight of the human misery, of
ill-health must invoke. Fighting here, and struggling there,
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with the conditions of disease, how ghastly must the con
test seem. How true and how applicable to such a phase
of life as related to a knowledge of health laws, are the
words of the Nazarene, “ If ye know these things, happy
are ye if ye do them."
The duties of the rational mind and of true religion in the
matter of health may be summed up in the one great con
tention that a knowledge of the laws of the universe
should be in the possession of every man or woman with a
life to live, and who boasts of the heaven-born desire to
live that life well. This is not the first time that from this
pulpit I have urged the duty of acquainting ourselves with
at least as much scientific knowledge as will enable us to
understand the constitution of things under which we live,
and of which we ourselves are part. The duty moral, and
the duty religious, exactly parallel in this case the duty
political. ■ You esteem it a bounden duty that for the
furtherance of individual and national interests you should
take a side in politics. And you adopt a side ; but you do
not choose it without weighing the pros and cons of the
matter; without comparing one policy with another ;
without taking a historical review of how or why things
political have come to exhibit their existing phases. Now
what you do in politics as a duty to yourselves, to your
children, and to the State, I imagine becomes a far more
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important matter when the subject is one of health.
The mistakes of a political leader are, as a rule, remedi
able. The genius of his opponent may make that a suc
cess, which otherwise would have proved a disaster. But
you cannot so remedy the mistakes, which, as a nation or
as individuals, we may commit in our health-science. The
grave, like the sea, holds its dead ; there is no erasing
from the statute-book of health the ghastly records of this
crime of indolence that brought the cholera, or of that
crime of ignorance that sent typhoid fever broadcast.
One duty, and one duty alone, lie before us. To it we
are called by the clarion-voice of truth itself, and that
duty is the task of learning the laws of health ; of know
ing that truth which, when we follow it, so surely shall
make us, in'the veriest sense, free.
How powerfully does Mr. Spencer put the case in those
admirable words of his on “ Education.” Listen to his
scathing denunciation of the fashionable know-nothing
ness that everywhere abounds. “ Seriously,” asks Mr.
Spencer, “ is it not an astonishing fact that though on the
treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and
their moral welfare or ruin, yet not one word of instruc
tion on the treatment of offspring is ever given to those
who will bye-and-bye be parents ? Is it not monstrous,” he
adds, <( that the fate of a new generation should be left to
the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined
with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the preju
diced counsel of grandmothers?” Again, Mr. Spencer
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says most forcibly : “ When sons and daughters grow up
sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a
misfortune ; as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after
the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils
come without causes, or that the causes are supernatural.
Nothing of the kind. In some cases the causes are doubt
less inherited, but in most cases foolish regulations are
the causes. Very generally parents themselves are
responsible for all this pain, this debility, this depression,
this misery.” And when comparing the inestimable value
of a knowledge of the laws of health over all other know
ledge, his words tell most truly : “ When a mother is
mourning over a first-born that has sunk under the
sequelae of scarlet fever (when perhaps, a candid
medical man has confirmed her suspicion that her
child would have recovered had not its system been
enfeebled by over study), when she is prostrate under
the pangs of combined grief and remorse ; it is but small
consolation that she can read Dante in the original.” Is
there a mother’s heart which does not appeal to her head
on hearing these words ? or is it needful to attempt to add
to their suggestive force ? The duty of each one of us,
then, seems clear enough as this first head, namely, that if
the conservation of life, the perfect discharge of life’s
duties, the happiness of ourselves, of those we love, and
of our neighbours, be aims which make " life worth living,”
then, you cannot, -with this admission, escape from the
inevitable conclusion that it is a crime against the best
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morality and the purest religion, to remain ignorant of the
laws of health, and of physical salvation.
But let me add, that the duty of knowing and doing
these things, is above all,an individual duty. It is the part
of the individual, which gives to the work of health
reform its character and its strength. Without individual
intelligence and appreciation of health-laws and of health’s
value, there can be no true health-reform at all. Nay,
more, the sacred duty we owe to our neighbour, in virtue
of which duty we expect and demand the mutual con
sideration that makes life pleasant'and society a possibility,
is perhaps better illustrated by the question of health
science than by any other phase of social existence.
Suppose that I live up to every law and rule of health
-which science lays down for the guidance of the race ;
grant that in my dwelling I observe, along with my
household, every requirement of sanitation ; imagine that
I and mine live the truly healthy life, of what avail, let me
ask, will all this care be, if my neighbour is a sloven in
health matters ? Of what advantage is my care; when his
carelessness floods me with sewer-gas, when his fever
spreads, through his ignorance of health-laws, to me ?
It is clear that in the complex warf and woop of
civilization, I must, perforce, even were I less willing
than morality makes me, consider my neighbours
interests as my own.
I must, if I am to
live safely, see
that
other individuals acquire
a like culture to mine. Every health-reformer, then,
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in addition to acquiring knowledge of the laws of
health, must see that his neighbour acquires know
ledge of a similar character. In the matter of health,
society must stand or fall as a whole. There can be no
education of one set of its units, leaving another set in
the ignorance which may, through its dire results, kill
educated and uneducated alike. Thus a second aspect of
our religious and moral duty in reference to health
becomes clear. It is the question of the lawyer put to
the Nazarene, “ Who is my neighbour ? ” only put with
infinite force in the light;of nineteenth century life and
exigency. And the parable of the Samaritan with his
kindly aid can never be better illustrated to-day, than when
we ourselves, having found the true way of life, guide the
footsteps of others into the paths that lead to where the
shadows linger lovingly and long at the close of life’s short
day.
To accomplish all this reformation requires time, requires
strength, requires industry and energy, and, above all, a
strong belief in the holiness of the work. But these things
are added unto them who believe in the physical salvation,
as the means come to the earnest worker in the direction of
moral culture or of a truly religious life of any kind. Once
let us believe in the righteousness of living well, and we
shall live well; let us but convince ourselves that as we
live now, we too often live wrongly and badly, and we
shall soon strive after the ideal that science is prepared to
set before them, who look to the possibilities of human
�life becoming a happier thing for all than it is now, even
for the best amongst us. Is there, let us ask, any higher
aim which you who worship here, or which those whose
spirits are attuned to yours can set before their waiting
eyes than the bettering of the race through the work of
health-reform ? Here is a something to live for and to
hope for—a perfectly possible Utopia to dream of lovingly,
and to assist practically by every means in our power.
For us, to whom the concerns of life are destitute of the
mawkish sentimentalism that environs a well-nigh obsolete
theology, there seems something solid, something attainable
in their idea of a well-nigh perfect state. To-day, Euthanasia
is only purchaseable by death; only the “dim beyond” is the
abode of painless existence, extinction, or what you will.
But think of a living, moving world, with a minimum of pain
and wretchedness, and theri turn to the prospects which
health-science and its successful pursuit hold out of
realising your dream. Do not imagine I am simply
indulging in a romance. I do not mean you to infer that
I regard the health-future of the race as a thing easily
attainable. Human nature is proverbially weak; it is
actually lazy ; it is difficult to rouse to energy, let alone
enthusiasm ; it likes to fold the hands to rest and to still
the eyes to sleep, provided to-day is undisturbed, even if
to-morrow’s prospect be stormy. But humanity, heie
and there, has its ideals and the strength of will
to work towards them. And I can discern in
the signs of the times the evidences that the
�(
24
)
health-ideal is assuming a well-defined shape ; that its
■outlines are not so misty as many suppose; and that
earnest minds are already shaping the course of their
thoughts to the attainable end of a long, a healthy, and a
happy hfe. Look around you and see what may be done,
what has been accomplished within your own experienced
We have left the valley of the grim shadow and are
already on the mountain-slope, when we have for ever
discarded the notion that disease is sent ^bv a Deity to
afflict and to chasten. We are already half-way up the
mountain, and we are coming to the blue azure itself,
when we learn that disease is, as often as not, the off—
spring of an ignorance of the conditions that make it
and produce it. Everywhere around you science
is up and doing. There are active minds hard at
work wresting the secrets of infection from the silent
tissues, or poring over the microscope to watch
how the disease-germ buds forth into full vigour, and
where, when, and how that germ may be seized and
destioyed, or at least purged of its noxious properties
and powers. Already the out-look is cheering; byand-by, with fuller knowledge we shall attain a stan
dard compared with which the possibilities of to
day seem but a vain show. Think of one solid
fact alone in the saving of human life, which comes to
you from a great northern city, but which finds a paral
lel elsewhere.
“When Glasgow,” says Professor
Corfield, “ was supplied with impure water from the river
�■L
(
25
)
Clyde, the number of deaths in cholera years varied from
S over 2,800 in 1832, to nearly 3,900 in 1854. After a supply
I of pure water had been obtained for the city from Loch
I Katrine, the number of cholera deaths in 1S66, the next
I cholera year, was only 68.” If ever the old declaration
1 that the people perish, and that human happiness is blotted
B out for lack of knowledge, received a practical application,
1 it surely finds such application in
such a statement as that
1 first made. If even the adage that “ knowledge is power”
| requires an illustration, you may find such illustration
I best and clearest in the saving of human life by the culture
| of the laws of health.
j
Take a mental retrospect of health-matters, and you will
not been speeding “ down the
ringing groves of change ” for nought during the last two
hundred years or so. If, as orthodox theology tells us,
this orb of ours has an existence and development, simply
as a prelude to a symphony of flames and torrents, that pre
lude and the development of human culture have together
produced a choice subject for the holocaust. Two hundred
years ago ague was rife, bred and fostered by the damp and
malaria which were developed in the swamps that environed London itself, and that were broadcast over the
land. Jail fever more recently decimated the miserable
populations of our prisons, until the benevolence of a
Howard struck the keynote of reform. Disease and death,
I discern that the world has
i
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|
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1
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J
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■■MHnSSSSSSBfiSSS&i
�being esteemed supernatural things were regarded beyond
man’s reach in the way of bettering or avoidance. The
life of the past periods was coarse; the morality was
universally low ; and we wonder to-day that the purer
spirits which even the worst of epochs behold, found
any circumstances which at all favoured the develop
ment of the higher life. To-day how changed the
piospect ! Ague has vanished; fevers are known to
be preventive ; men are being taught wisdom over the
graves of their grandparents ; morality is at least to-day
something more than a name ; and the fears of the night
of grim terrorism of the supernatural are fast vanishing
beneath the increasing radiance of the sun of truth.
What future awaits us, who can tell ? But one thing
is clear, that there are possibilities looming before us,
which even the careless cannot afford to neglect. The
religion of the future will very largely, I think, be a
religion of health. It will be a religion wherein the
causes of pauperism and crime will be known and dis
cussed, and alleviated or banished. Its higher develop
ment will have
“--------------- lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.”
It will aim at making rational minds through wellnourished and healthy bodies. It will leave the “ sanc
tity of dirt ” as a watchword for those who think more of
their souls than their bodies, and it will elevate the race
through the development of heal th with a power comparabe
�to that of an Archimedean lever, that literally can move
a world. Best of all, this religion, which founds itself on
an appreciation of the physical wants and requirements of
man’s nature, will serve as the most efficient corrective to
the false ideals upon which men to-day lavish the service
of a life. It will teach mankind that this earth is their
best and purest heaven ; that in healthy frames, in pure
affections, and in the enjoyment of a rational existence,
there are pleasures beyond those dreamt of by ancient
seer or religious devotee. It will make this earth the
happy home of a contented race, a fit heaven for
the life that ought to be all happiness and health.
It will make the world a scene which, at the close of a wellspent life, man may leave without a pang of remorse,
surrendering his days to the unknown and unknowable,
in the fearless knowledge of a wisely used existence
without so much as the shadow of a teai.
�!
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The religious aspects of health: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, London, November 20th 1881
Creator
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Wilson, Andrew
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 27 p. ; 15 cm.
Series title: South Place Discourses
Notes: Printed by Frederick G. Hickson & Co., 257 High Holborn, London. Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2.
Publisher
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1881]
Identifier
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T337
G3358
Subject
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Sermons
Health
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The religious aspects of health: a discourse given at South Place Chapel, London, November 20th 1881), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Health-Religious Aspects
Morris Tracts
Sermons