companies will not receive proposals from persons who are not of sound health and sober habits.

5. Of recent years, two other methods of investment have sprung up for working men. One of these is the Co-operative Society, already noticed in a previous chapter. Besides serving the more immediate purpose of meeting the ordinary wants of working people at lower prices than ordinary shops, these societies have also become recipients of their savings, and that to a very considerable extent. The partners are required to hold a certain amount of the society's stock or capital, and allowed to go as far as £100. Not a few members of the original Rochdale Society hold stock to that amount. But many of them have withdrawn a considerable part of their stock for the purpose of investing it in the other concerns which have grown up out of the original Society. It appears that in two years, the money so withdrawn amounted to the very large sum of £22,830.

The other mode of investment that has recently sprung up is

6. The scheme of BUILDING SOCIETIES. These societies have been formed for the purpose of enabling workmen and small tradesmen to become proprietors of their own houses on practicable and advantageous terms. We shall have occasion to speak of them

when we come to the subject of houses for the working classes. Meanwhile we may say that, in some parts of England, these societies have had wonderful success. One cluster of societies in Birmingham have received, in small sums, upwards of half a million sterling, while the number of houses erected approaches 10,000. This is almost wholly the work of the labouring classes, of persons whose incomes range from 12s. to 40s. a week. It is found that their average investments are about £18 a year, or nearly a shilling a day for each member, a sum more than double what we have suggested in this chapter as feasible for young working men.

Throughout the whole of this chapter (which, no doubt, some persons would characterize, with a sigh,

as

unco worldly") there have been floating through our mind the memorable words of Christ, when, after the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes, he directed the disciples to gather up the fragments, "that nothing be lost." Instructive and significant at any time, these words of our Lord derive quite a wonderful impressiveness from the occasion on which they were uttered. It was in connexion with a miracle of creative power, when he had just shown his ability, by a mere effort of his will, to provide supplies absolutely without limit. It has been well said of this miracle: "The union of this savingness

and care with creative power is something so peculiar, that it impresses beyond all mistake a heavenly character upon the narrative. Never would such a thing have been invented. Nature, that mirror of the divine perfections, places before our eyes the same combination of boundless munificence and truest frugality in imparting her benefits." It is, indeed, a divine union,-munificence and economy. Munificence without economy is of the earth, earthy. Nothing is lost in the kingdom of nature. The refuse of one class of creatures is the life of another. Nature is ever at work forming new combinations, using up old materials, bringing them forward again in new and surprising forms of beauty. Nothing is lost in Providence. The forces that were set in motion a thousand years ago are continuing to this day to bear their fruits all over the world. Nothing is more unlike God than waste. Economy has been so much abused that the word has come to smell of dust and earth. But it ought not so to be. "Let nothing be lost" is a great rule to bind upon the conscience. No money, no time, no talent, no opportunity of good-doing or good-getting, no chapter of the Bible, no sermon, no sacrament, no affliction, no blessing! Make profit from them all!

CHAPTER VI.

HEALTH WITHOUT DRUGS.

"And the body, let us not neglect it. Bad health, a feeble body, is often a great obstacle to the accomplishment of our work before God. We ought to accept it when God sends it. But it is our duty before God to observe the regimen needful even for the body, and to take the precautions necessary to strengthen it for the service and for the glory of God; this thought exalts and sanctifies everything."-ADOLPHE MONOD, Regrets of a Dying Man.

A FRIEND of ours, who enjoys excellent health, not far from the fourscore years, and whose worldly affairs are in excellent order, has often told us, that one of his rules of life has been to try to keep his body out of the hands of the doctors, and his affairs out of the hands of the lawyers. We mean no slight to these two professions, which in their proper spheres do so much for our benefit, when we pronounce the rule an excellent one, and worthy, wherever the circumstances admit, of all imitation. The sum and substance of what we are now going to urge is, to do all you can to keep your bodies out of the hands of the doctors. Or, if this way of putting it sounds somewhat ungracious to those who discharge among us an office so difficult and important, let us express it differently. Our object is to

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urge you to do your utmost to preserve unimpaired the stock of good health with which it has pleased your Maker to bless you. Good health is a commodity of which most of us have a fair share when we begin life. Sickness, for the most part, is a foreigner, who insinuates himself, unsought and unwelcome, into our constitution. It is easier, according to the proverb, to keep out than to put out. This is true emphatically of sickness. Our counsel is to try to keep it out; this is easier, cheaper, and better every way; it is what commonly we may do without the doctors; but if it comes in spite of all, then the doctor's aid must be sought to enable us to put it out. We are not forgetful of the good old rule, "Every man to his business;" we are not intruding on the doctor's province; our desire is to get the masses to understand and observe those God-given laws on which, to a very large degree, good health depends. There are few sights more sad than a sickly workman, toiling away at the anvil or the bench, unless it be a workman's sickly wife, toiling at the wash-tub. Look at their languid eyes, and long, dejected faces! What a priceless blessing health and strength would be to them! How differently would they live and work if they had the conscious vigour and elastic spirits of the strong man, rejoicing to run a race! How cheerily they