isoned at
once and completely, we should have well-ventilated houses, whatever
else we failed to have. But because people can go on for weeks,
months, and years breathing poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly
lowering the tone of their vital powers, and yet be what they call
"pretty well, I thank you," sermons on ventilation and fresh air go by
them as an idle song. "I don't see but we are well enough, and we
never took much pains about these things. There's air enough gets into
houses, of course. What with doors opening and windows occasionally
lifted, the air of houses is generally good enough;"--and so the
matter is dismissed.

One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now abroad in the world,
giving lessons on health to the children of men. The cholera is like
the angel whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebellious
Israelites. "Beware of him, obey his voice, and provoke him not; for
he will not pardon your transgressions." The advent of this fearful
messenger seems really to be made necessary by the contempt with which
men treat the physical laws of their being. What else could have
purified the dark places of New York? What a wiping-up and reforming
and cleansing is going before him through the country! At last we find
that Nature is in earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored
with impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil,--even
although the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted; and if all
the precautions that men are now willing to take could be made
perpetual, the alarm would be a blessing to the world.

Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical
religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm
personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise,
and Quiet: and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the
whole ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human
being whose lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose
stomach has been fed only by appropriate food, whose muscles have been
systematically trained by appropriate exercises, and whose mind is
kept tranquil by faith in God and a good conscience, has perfect
physical religion. There is a line where physical religion must
necessarily overlap spiritual religion and rest upon it. No human
being can be assured of perfect health, through all the strain and
wear and tear of such cares and such perplexities as life brings,
witho