"As there is a will of God for our higher nature--the moral laws--as emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If you would know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with God's will in the lower: which simply means this--that if you want to live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of exercise, the law of cleanliness,--this is the law or will of God for you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we are ambitious to get on to do God's will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will in minor things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and pure water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness, or uncleanness, or the man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only run into the church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar, and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain." _The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND. The Duty of Physical Health MARCH 25 "Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more." Bishop SOUTH. "There is no true care for the body which forgets the soul. There is no true care for the soul which is not mindful of the body.... The duty of physical health and the duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are not two duties; they are two parts of one duty,--which is the living of the completest life which it is possible for man to live. And the two parts minister to one another. Be good that you may be well; be well that you may be good. Both of those two injunctions are reasonable, and both are binding on us all." PHILLIPS BROOKS. The Duty of Physical Health MARCH 26 "Moreover, health is not only a great element of happiness, but it is essential to good work. It is not merely wasteful but selfish to throw it away.