Say What? Cleanliness is next to godliness/Early to bed and early to rise....

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

Today's Say What? looks at cleanliness is next to godliness and early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, with help from characters from Starsky & Hutch and The Sentinel.

These two pithy sayings encouraging cleanliness and hard work are mainly connected by the time that they appear in the forms we know today, namely the eighteenth century.

Cleanliness is next to godliness has a muddy pedigree. What background I can find on the internet suggests that the concept comes out of the Talmudic tradition. Old Testament books of the Bible contain many references to the importance of both ritual and actual cleanliness. Sources I can find agree that the earliest reference to this idea in English is from Francis Bacon in his Advancement of Learning from 1605.

Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

John Wesley is first recorded as using the quote in a form recognisable today, in a sermon published in 1791.

Slovenliness is no part of religion. Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness.

Wesley's 'indeed' indicates that he's expecting his readers to have met this concept before.

So what does cleanliness is next to godliness actually mean? In the Christian context, godliness is a highly important virtue, the acknowledgement of the importance of faith and religion in everyday life. Cleanliness is also a virtue, albeit a more secular one. All human societies develop rules about appropriate hygiene. In Wesley's case, he is possibly exhorting his fellow Methodists to present themselves to the world without reproach, given that early Methodism was sometimes regarded as a dangerously levelling cult movement in its outreach to the working class in England.

After an unfortuate incident with a fugitive and a dumpster filled with particulary disgusting garbage, Hutch hustled Starsky to the Police Department locker room. "Cleanliness is next to godliness, Starsk, and if you're going to be next to me then you have got to shower."

We still say cleanliness is next to godliness, usually with the intention of commenting on physical hygiene or its lack, although a wander through the web indicated commenters interpreting the saying in relation to religious and moral good practice also.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise is much easier to track down and is pretty universally ascribed to the indefatigable Benjamin Frankin, in his Poor Richard's Almanack of 1735. This proverb is clear in its meaning, since early rising has long been associated with industry and early going to bed means you're not going to waste all that money you earned with your industry in drinking and debauchery. The saying has been satirised on several occasions. Carl Sandburg suggested that 'Early to bed and early to rise and you never meet any prominent people.' Humorist James Thurber wrote, 'Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.'

Blair's habit of setting his alarm clock to remind him to go bed was starting to annoy Jim. "What happened to early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?"

Blair shrugged, before he said with immense and irritating smugness, "It doesn't get much earlier to bed than 2 a.m., man."

In these days of shift work, 'larks' and 'owls', and sleep studies, Franklin's concept is still quoted and examined.