Putting on one side the accidents of life--and among the accidents I include the acute diseases, such as pneumonia, rheumatic fever, and the infectious diseases, which attack from without, and the so far unexplained cancer--we must allow that our lives and our health are to a great extent in our own keeping, and of our own making. Three score years and ten was David’s estimate of the working years of a man’s life, but under modern conditions of improved sanitation the term of life should be at least four score years and ten, and this extra 20 per cent. should not be a time of pain and sorrow, but of peace and rest, with still some capacity for work. Many of us used to be content to answer the first question, “Why do we die?” by saying our time had come. The unreflecting but so-called religious person seemed to think that God had placed a time limit against each individual when he came into the world. This is pure fatalism, and unworthy of the name of reason or of faith in the Divine justice. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die” is almost the logical position of such minds. We cannot hope to solve individually or in detail the mysteries of life and death, why one is cut off in the full tide of his energy, and another, who seems to be going out on the ebb, remaineth. But we must put these following questions honestly to ourselves--Are free will, scientific work, knowledge, self-restraint, and self-denial to be so much wasted powder? Are we to work out our destiny, the sport of chance, hopelessly, illogically, without ambition and without a healthy pride in our work? Is the man who spends his life in riotous living, in over-eating and drinking, and in committing every physiological sin that he can think of, to live as long and as healthily as the wise and sober man? Has the great Father of us all given us no motive for life, no work to do for Him or for our brothers? Must not we, as separate sections of the Divine image and of His all-pervading spiritual force, endeavour with all our strength and knowledge to prolong the life given us to the utmost limit? Surely the fact of our life, the gift of our life, becomes a great personal responsibility, an acknowledged debt to our Maker that we can only repay by regarding it as a treasure to be daily cared for and cherished. Thus the promotion of health and the prevention of disease must manifestly be our first considerations, for without health our output of work ceases, or becomes both in quantity and character a poor thing. The despairing cry of “Why was I born?” comes to most of us in the sorrows and tragedies of life, but it is the cry of faithlessness, of relativity, of blindness to the sure, but half-seen purposes of the Absolute God.