Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-04-29


life, rushed at it with handspike to
thrust between the spolxes of the wheel
| of the rolling cannon, and by FORUM
ate leverage arrested the gun till it
could be dashed fast. But that struggle
did not seem so disheartening as that
man enters upon who attempts TO fight
his natural temperament, whether it
be too fast or too slow, too nervous or
too Emphatic. God help him, for God
only can.
Now, what are the results of indo-
lence? A marked consequence of this
vice is physical disease. The healthi-
ness of the whole natural world de-
ponds upon activity. The winds,
tossed and driven in endless circuits,
scattering the mists from the mount
aims and scooping out death damps
from the caves and blasting the miasma
OF swamps and hurting back the fetid
atmosphere of great cities, are healthy,
just because of their swiftness and I'M
ccntrollableness of sweep But, after
while, the wind falls and the hot sun
pours through it, and when the leaves
bend not once all day long,
then pestilence smites it's victims and
digs trenches for the dead. The fount-
ain, born far up in the wild wood of
the mountain, comes down brighter
for every obstacle against which it is
riven and singing new song on every
shelf of rock over which it bounds, till
it rolls over the water wheels in the
valley, not ashamed to grind corn, and
runs through the long grass Of the
meadow, where the willows reach
down to dip their branches and the I'M
yolled oxen come at even-tide to cool.
Healthy water! Bright water! Happy
water! While some stream, too lazy
any more to run, gathers itself into
a wayside pool, where the swine wal
low and filthy insects hop over the sur
face and reptiles crawl among the ooze,
and frogs utter their hideous croak,
and by day and night there rises from
the foul mre and green scum fever and
plague and death There is an endless
activity 1nder foot and overhead. Not
one four-o'clock in the flower bed, not
one fly on the window pane, not one
squirrel gathering food from the cones
of the white pine, not one rabbit feed
ing on clover-tops, not one drop falling
in shower, not one minnow glancing
in the sea, not one quail whistling
from the grass, not one hawk cav
ing in the sky, but is busy
now and is busy always, fulfilling it's
mission as certainly as any monarch on
earth or any angel in heaven. You
hear the shout of the boys busy in
the field and the rattle of the whifIle-
trees on the harrow, but you do not
know that there is more industry in the
earth upturned and in the dumb vege-
tation under foot than in all that you
see. II you put your ear to n lump of
riven sod you may hear nothing in the
roots and spicul@ Of grass, but there
are at work spades and cleaners and
pile drivers and battcring rams and in
ternecine wars. i do not wonder that
the lively fancy of the ancients saw in
the inanmate creation around Floras,
and Pomonas, and Graces, and Fauns,
and Fairies, and SatyIs, and
Nymphs. Everything is busy. Nothing
is inanimate, except the man who can
not see the life and hear the music. At
the creation the morning stars sang tc-
gether, but they were only the choir
which was to lead all the stars and all
the mountains and all the seas in Gods
worship. All natural objects seem
at one and the same time uniting in
work and JOY and worship. In Gods
creation there is no pause in either the
worship or the work or the joy. Amid
all natural objects at one and the same
time it is Hallow Fen and Whit Sun
day and Ash Wednesday and All Saints
Day. All the healthy beauty of that
which we see and hear in the natural
world is dependent upon activity
and unrest Men will be
healthy-intellectua morally and
physically-only upon the condition of
an active industry. l know men die
every day of overworlk. They droop
down in coal pits and among the spin
dies of Northern factories and on the
cotton plantations of the South. In
every city and town and village you
find men grooming under burdens, as,
in the East, the camels stagger under
their loads between Aleppo and d.
mascus. Dife is crushed out every day
at counters and work. benches and an
wills. But, there are other multi
tudes who die from mere inertia.
Indulgences every day are contracting
diseases beyond the catholicon
of allopathy and homeopathy and n.y.
dropathy and eclecticism. Rather than
work they rush upon lancets and seal
pels. Nature has provided for those
who violate her laws bv inactivity,
what rheum for the eyes and what
govt for the feet and what curvature for
the spine and what structures for the
chest and what tubercles for the lungs
and what rhumatisms for the muscles
and what neuralgias for the nerves.
Nature in time arraigns every such
culprit at her bar, and presents against
him an indictment of one hundred
cou nts, and convicts him on each ono
of them.
There are many who estimate the