1.J 05. The Healthfulness of Benevolence

The Healthfulness of Benevolence. And more than that, let me tell you there is nothing that enables a man to last so long as the qualities which naturally are trained into this spirit of true, sympathetic beneficence. All the acerb feelings grind the enamel off. All men who work under a sense of responsibility men who hear the crack of Conscience’s whip all the time, and all those who are inspired by the Protean forms of fear easily wear out. The kindly feelings of man’s nature have nourishment in them. They are not stimulants alone. They carry nutriment, and a man who is working good-naturedly, with the sweetness of hope and with the facility of courage all the time, can work weeks and months without breaking down; nay, he grows fat on work. I hold that there is nothing so wholesome or so medicinal as brain-work, rightly directed. While a man may exhaust his nervous system by excessive brain- work, a moderate and reasonable practice of it is beneficial. You all know that ministers are the longest livers. I do not mention that to prove that they are the greatest brain-workers; but a man who works under a high form of positive benevolence, which brings cheer and hope, can work longer and with less fatigue, and he can continue under intense excitement longer and with less wear and tear, than under any other stimulus.

I have often been asked by what secret I retain health and vigour under labours multiform and continuous. I owe much to a good constitution inherited from my parents, not spoiled by youthful excesses or weakened by over-study; much also to an early acquired knowledge of how to take care of myself, to secure invariably a full measure of sleep, to regard food as an engineer does fuel (to be employed economically, and entirely with reference to the work to be done by the machine); much to the habit of economizing social forces, and not wasting in needless conversation and pleasurable hilarities the spirit that would carry me through many days of necessary work; but, above all, to the possession of a hopeful disposition and natural courage, to sympathy with men, and to an unfailing trust in God; so that I have always worked for the love of working. I have cast out the grinding sense of responsibility as uncongenial to the faith and trust which belong to a Christian life. I have studiously refused to entertain anxieties. I have put in all the forces which I possessed, as a farmer puts in his labour and his seed, and I have left the germination, and the weather, and the future harvest, to the providence of God. In general, I have never performed my work but once, whereas many others perform theirs three times first, by anticipation; then, in realization; and afterwards, by rumination. In general, however, it may be said that a hopeful, trusting, and loving disposition carries health and restores men from fatigue more rapidly than any other. The acerb feelings are corrosive. The saccharine emotions are nourishing and enduring.