precious possessions
Health is one of those intangible inestimably precious possessions, like life and
liberty, to which all are entitled by natural Law. Yet are there but few who are
careful to conserve this priceless heritage. It is a boon all too often unappreciated
until lost, and once lost, it may not always be regained, though intense be our
regrets and our endeavours exhaust the field of human resource.
Again, although the possession of passable health may be ours, it is a condition
rarely totally untroubled and continuous and, therefore, cannot be correctly
classified as perfect health.
These simple definitions may seem to the reader trite and trivial; but how many of
us, let me ask, give thought to their vital vast significance.
Never to need a physician; ever to be unconsciously guarded against all access of
disease; to maintain the fair form and vigor of the body without effort, so that no
depleting influences can find a hold; this is the health ideal by nature set, the
standard to which the earliest progenitors of our race may doubtless have
conformed, but upon which succeeding generations have sedulously turned their backs.
Philosophers have defined this physically perfect state.
Historians have immortalized it in heroic tomes.
Poets have extolled it in great epic verse.
Artists have depicted it in portraiture and tapestry.
Sculptors have expressed it in the life-like stone.
The sick have longed for it.
Saints have prayed for it and, in the search for its fabled, false elixir, alchemists
have sacrificed their lives. It remained for the smug, "sober judgment" of our day to
pronounce it "unattainable"—unattainable!
This, however, is a matter of small moment; for, as Whittier reminds us: "The
falsehoods which we spurn today were the truths of long ago"—and although men
part reluctantly with favorite—and lucrative—fallacies, and "Faith, fantastic Faith,
once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last," nevertheless this false
belief, like so many other sapient pronouncements of human wisdom, must be
subjected to final reversal.
The ideal state of health is, truly, "unattainable" when we refuse to yield obedience
to the simple laws of nature—when we continuously persist in interference with her
work and embarrass her with artificial substitutes, defying her august hygienic
precepts by our manner of life.
Not so, however, if we yield to her inducements, fulfil her requirements, and
submit ourselves freely to her unerring will.
There is less of fault than of weakness in the fact that so many of us fail to give
nature the opportunity to rear us as healthy men and women, to keep us more free
than we are from suffering and disease.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness and follow on the lines of the veriest simplicity.
The preservation of health must needs, then, move along these self-same simple
lines.
It is ignorance, in most cases, rather than unwillingness that brings upon the race
the punishment we call disease.
But how can they be expected to learn who have no teacher? And how can they
teach who are themselves untaught?
It is incumbent upon those who have acquired knowledge to impart life-saving
truths, and there is no greater benefactor of his kind than he who reduces life's
problems to their simplest terms.
"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty." Such is the dictum of King David, the psalmist, as expressed in
the Hebrew Scriptures.
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