Character and Conduct – 24 March – Mens Sana in Corpore Sano

AS THERE is a will of God for our higher nature – the moral laws — as emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If you would know God’s will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with God’s will in the lower: which simply means this — that if you want to live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of exercise, the law of cleanliness, — this is the law or will of God for you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we are ambitious to get on to do God’s will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God’s will in minor things, as much of God’s will in taking good bread and pure water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever heard of gluttony doing God’s will, or laziness, or unclean-ness, or the man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for obeying God in anything else: for God’s will does not only run into the church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar, and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain.

The Ideal Life, HENRY DRUMMOND.

oooOOOooo