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 nobody 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 God 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,--God gives it to all his children without stint,--and good plain clothes and meal may now be had cheaper than ever.