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 God, 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, God 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 God'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 circumstances 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