A Soul in Right Health…

“The preservation of health is a duty.”¹ In other words, there is — on all of us — an obligation to keep free from contaminating and injurious substances and habits and influences that would impair the full and healthful functioning of the wondrous physical faculties which the Lord God has given. And in addition to physical health, including physical morality, which Spencer also referred to, there are health of spirit, and morality of mind — mental health, spiritual health — which must surely be considered, along with full physical functioning. Hence the question from Carlyle, “Does not health mean harmony?”² — and then he added: “A healthy body is good; but a soul in right health, — it is the thing beyond all others to be prayed for; the blessedest thing this earth receives of Heaven… A soul in right health.”² The fact is, there is a wholeness in man. He is of the mind and of the spirit as well as of the flesh, and nothing that affects one side of him fails to affect all others. And health isn’t a matter merely of muscle, or of good digestion, or of strong back or biceps. Health is more than this; not less, if possible, but much more. And there is need for balance, for a man’s nurturing all sides of himself. And this wholeness of health — if it is a wholeness — means happiness. “The ground-work of all happiness,” said Leigh Hunt, “is health. Take care of this ground;…”³ Who could be said to have full health with brooding, with had conduct, with bad conscience? There is no real health in unhappiness. And in this life there is no commandment, if we read rightly, that pertains to things merely material or merely spiritual, for mind and spirit and matter are so mutually affected, so closely associated. And neither young nor old would ever wisely indulge anything that would impair mental or spiritual or physical functioning or physical functioning, or be detrimental to health and happiness.