By all means let us culture physical energy.  Let there be more gymnasiums in our colleges and theological seminaries.  Let the student know how to wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle see who is the strongest.  The health of mental and spiritual work often depends on physical health.  If I were not opposed to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the book column in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land the condition of each critic’s liver and spleen at the time of his writing.

A very prominent literary man apologized to me the other day for his merciless attack on one of my books, saying that he felt miserable that morning and must pitch into something; and my book being the first one on the table, he pitched into that.  Our health decides our style of work.  If this world is to be taken for God, we want more sanctified muscle.  The man who comes to his Christian work having had sound sleep the night before, and the result of roast beef rare in his organism, can do almost anything.  Luther was not obliged to nurse his appetite with any plantation bitters, but was ready for the coarsest diet, even the “Diet of Worms.”

But while I advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and muscle in the abstract.  Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune you are going to play on it.  I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard Baxter, whose ailments were almost as many as his books, and they numbered forty.

At this last sentence the company at the table, forgetful of the presence of Doctor Heavyasbricks, showed some disposition at good humor, when the doctor’s brows lifted in surprise, and he observed that he thought a man with forty ailments was a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to depress a tea-table rather than exhilarate it.

“But, Governor Wiseman,” said Quizzle, “do you not think that it is possible to combine physical, mental and spiritual recreations?”

Oh yes, replied the governor; I like this new mode of mingling religion with summer pleasures.  Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents and packing their lunch-baskets and buying their railroad and steamboat tickets for the camp-meeting grounds.  Martha’s Vineyard, Round Lake, Ocean Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle psalms and prayers with the voice of surf and forest.  Rev. Doctor J.H.  Vincent, the silver trumpet of Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the five thousand sat down on the grass and had a surplus of provision to take home to those who were too stupid to go.  From the arrangement being made for that meeting in August, I judge there will be so much consecrated enthusiasm that there may be danger that some morning, as the sun strikes gloriously through the ascending mist of Chautauqua Lake, our friends may all go up in a chariot of fire, leaving our Sunday-schools in a bereft condition.  If they do go up in that way, may their mantle or their straw hat fall this way!