Health, or, How to Live

WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS

HE prescribed the minutest rules of life for them, even such as concerned their physical habits. He found that some became “nervous” more probably by too much work than by too little, though he thought otherwise. He gave them advice on the subject. “Touch no drink, tobacco, or snuff. Eat very light, if any, supper. Breakfast on nettle or orangepeel tea. Lie down before ten; rise before five. Every day use as much exercise as you can bear; or murder yourselves by inches.” “These rules,” he adds, “are as necessary for the people as the preachers.” ... He interrogated them closely in his printed Minutes about their habits, “Do you,” he asked, “deny yourselves every useless pleasure of sense, imagination, honor? Are you temperate in all things? — to take one for instance, in food? Do you use only that kind, and that degree which is best both for soul and body? Do you see the necessity of this? Do you eat no flesh suppers? no late suppers? these naturally tend to destroy bodily health. Do you eat only three meals a day? ... Do you take no more food than is necessary at each meal? You may know, if you do, by a load at your stomach, by drowsiness or heaviness, and in a while by weak or bad nerves. Do you use only that kind and that degree of drink which is best both for body and soul? Do you drink water? Why not? Did you ever? Why did you leave it off, if not for health? When will you begin again? To-day?” —Dr. Stephen’s History of Methodism. HHTL 359.2