9 
delight which a man should find in his work , 
instead of improving the faculties exercised by 
It, it grinds them down, impairs, and prema 
turely destroys them ; instead of giving health 
and strength, and making bone and sinew 
active and skilful, instead of developing the 
mental powers, instead of quickening and exalt 
ing the virtues and graces of the soul, it strongly 
helps to make the body stunted, diseased, and 
deformed—to superinduce a sleepless, raving 
insanity, or, by softening and enfeebling the 
brain, imbecility and idiocy. It deadens and 
corrupts the soul. God only knows how much 
of refinement and love, how much of all that 
most truly ennobles man, has been, ‘ as with an 
iron nerve, put down ; ’ how much of wit and 
knowledge and ingenuity and genius annihilated, 
or altogether subverted ; how much of athletic 
vigour and superb gracefulness changed into 
feeble deformity by over-exertion ; how much 
of comfort and happiness swept as by an 
avenging angel from the lot of poor humanity , 
how many of those good things for which itself 
was undertaken wasted and lost, how many 
persons hurried to premature giaves, how 
many more obliged to toil on through their