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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