Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People

One word more; you should call your Doctor early. It saves time; it saves suffering; it saves trouble; it saves life. If you saw a fire beginning in your house, you would put it out as fast as you could. You might perhaps be able to blow out with your breath what in an hour the fire-engine could make nothing of. So it is with disease and the Doctor. A disease in the morning when beginning is like the fire beginning; a dose of medicine, some simple thing, may put it out, when if left alone, before night it may be raging hopelessly, like the fire if left alone, and leaving your body dead and in the ruins in a few hours. So, call in the Doctor soon; it saves him much trouble, and may save you your life.

And let me end by asking you to call in the Great Physician; to call him instantly, to call him in time; there is not a moment to lose. He is waiting to be called; he is standing at the door. But he must be called, – he may be called too late.

SERMON II

THE DOCTOR: HIS DUTIES TO YOU

YOU remember our last sermon was mostly about your duties to the Doctor. I am now going to speak about his duties to you; for you know it is a law of our life, that there are no one-sided duties, – they are all double. It is like shaking hands, there must be two at it; and both of you ought to give a hearty grip and a hearty shake. You owe much to many, and many owe much to you. The Apostle says, "Owe no man anything but to love one another"; but if you owe that, you must be forever paying it; it is always due, always running on; and the meanest and most helpless, the most forlorn, can always pay and be paid in that coin, and in paying can buy more than he thought of. Just as a farthing candle, twinkling out of a cotter's window, and, it may be, guiding the gudeman home to his wife and children, sends its rays out into the infinite expanse of heaven, and thus returns, as it were, the light of the stars, which are many of them suns. You cannot pass any one on the street to whom you are not bound by this law. If he falls down, you help to raise him. You do your best to relieve him, and get him home; and let me tell you, to your great gain and honor, the poor are far more ready and better at this sort of work than the gentlemen and ladies. You do far more for each other than they do. You will share your last loaf; you will sit up night after night with a neighbor you know nothing about, just because he is your neighbor, and you know what it is to be neighbor-like. You are more natural and less selfish than the fine folks. I don't say you are better, neither do I say you are worse; that would be a foolish and often mischievous way of speaking. We have all virtues and vices and advantages peculiar to our condition. You know the queer old couplet, —

"Them what is rich, them rides in chaises;Them what is poor, them walks like blazes."

If you were well, and not in a hurry, and it were cold, would you not much rather "walk like blazes" than ride listless in your chaise? But this I know, for I have seen it, that according to their means, the poor bear one another's burdens far more than the rich.

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