A sermon, preached in the Cathedral, Manchester, on Sunday morning, April 30th, 1854 / by the Rev. Charles Richson ... with notes by John Sutherland of the General Board of Health, London.

  • Richson, Charles.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: A sermon, preached in the Cathedral, Manchester, on Sunday morning, April 30th, 1854 / by the Rev. Charles Richson ... with notes by John Sutherland of the General Board of Health, London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Their neglect may be inexcusable, but one advantage we certainly derive by discovering their importance from inde¬ pendent sources, after their observance has been so long in This is done on the only principle on which such teaching has ever succeeded with the great mass of a people, namely,—by im¬ pressing upon them that the moral, physical, and religious laws which govern man’s relations to the universe and its Creator are ordained by the same Great Being, and require to be acknowledged and obeyed as direct enunciations of the will of God. The Mosaic sanitary code must therefore be judged of as a whole, and in its relation to the other commanded duties, and also in relation to the climate; to the habits and customs of the Jewish people, while in a state of bondage in Egypt, and to that type of civilization which it was intended to impress on the nation when it took its place in the promised land. It is when viewed in this manner, and not merely in its detached clauses and enactments, that the marvellous fitness of that code becomes apparent. An ignorant and recently enslaved people, wandering through the Arabian desert fifteen centuries before the Christian era, could not be expected to understand tlie physical reasons why certain articles of food should be rejected while others might be eaten with impunity; or why certain social and personal acts, often entailing much trouble and labour, required to be per¬ formed. And this is not to be wondered at, when nearly nineteen centuries after the Christian era we are slowly and labourously working out these very problems in order that all men may see their reasonableness, and may be led to acknowledge and obey natural laws which have as direct a bearing on the personal well¬ being of every human being, and as important an influence on civilization at the present time as they had when states were first founded. This was, no doubt, the reason why the didactic and authoratative method of teaching was adopted; and so completely did it succeed that the Jewish people escaped pestilence during the whole period of their national existence, except where it was directly inflicted for a special end, as on the occasion of the number¬ ing of the people. Even till this present day they suffer less, in