It is a curious thing that I remarked long ago, and have often turned in my head, that the old word for “holy” in the German language—­heilig—­also means “healthy.”  And so Heil-bronn means “holy-well,” or “healthy-well.”  We have in the Scotch “hale;” and, I suppose our English word “whole”—­with a “w”—­all of one piece, without any hole in it—­is the same word.  I find that you could not get any better definition of what “holy” really is than “healthy—­completely healthy.” Mens sana in corpore sano.  (Applause.)

A man with his intellect a clear, plain, geometric mirror, brilliantly sensitive of all objects and impressions around it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions—­not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation—­healthy, clear, and free, and all round about him.  We never can attain that at all.  In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it.  You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual operation—­if you are going to write a book—­at least, I never could—­without getting decidedly made ill by it, and really you must if it is your business—­and you must follow out what you are at—­and it sometimes is at the expense of health.  Only remember at all times to get back as fast as possible out of it into health, and regard the real equilibrium as the centre of things.  You should always look at the heilig, which means holy, and holy means healthy.

Well, that old etymology—­what a lesson it is against certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, that have gone about as if this world were all a dismal-prison house!  It has, indeed, got all the ugly things in it that I have been alluding to; but there is an eternal sky over it, and the blessed sunshine, verdure of spring, and rich autumn, and all that in it, too.  Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.  Neither do you find it to have been so with old Knox.  If you look into him you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary, and a great deal of laughter.  We find really some of the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I have seen in any man; for instance, in his “History of the Reformation,” which is a book I hope every one of you will read—­a glorious book.

On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it—­not in sorrows or contradiction to yield, but pushing on towards the goal.  And don’t suppose that people are hostile to you in the world.  You will rarely find anybody designedly doing you ill.  You may feel often as if the whole world is obstructing you, more or less; but you will find that to be because the world is travelling in a different way from you, and rushing on in its own path.  Each man has