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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
to certain hours, and then a portion of their time should be spent in
physical labor. And if their habits of eating, dressing, and sleeping are
in accordance with physical law, they can obtain an education without
sacrificing physical and mental health.
Physical Decline of the Race
The book of Genesis gives quite a definite account of social and
individual life, and yet we have no record of an infant’s being born
blind, deaf, crippled, deformed, or imbecile. There is not an instance
upon record of a natural death in infancy, childhood, or early manhood.
There is no account of men and women dying of disease. Obituary
notices in the book of Genesis run thus: “And all the days that Adam
lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.” “And all
the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.”
Concerning others, the record states: He lived to a good old age; and
he died. It was so rare for a son to die before the father that such an
occurrence was considered worthy of record: “And Haran died before
his father Terah.” Haran was a father of children before his death.
God endowed man with so great vital force that he has withstood
the accumulation of disease brought upon the race in consequence of
perverted habits, and has continued for six thousand years. This fact
of itself is enough to evidence to us the strength and electrical energy
that God gave to man at his creation. It took more than two thousand
years of crime and indulgence of base passions to bring bodily disease
upon the race to any great extent. If Adam, at his creation, had not
been endowed with twenty times as much vital force as men now have,
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the race, with their present habits of living in violation of natural law,
would have become extinct. At the time of Christ’s first advent the race
had degenerated so rapidly that an accumulation of disease pressed
upon that generation, bringing in a tide of woe and a weight of misery
inexpressible.
The wretched condition of the world at the present time has been
presented before me. Since Adam’s fall the race has been degenerating.
Some of the reasons for the present deplorable condition of men and
women, formed in the image of God, were shown me. And a sense
of how much must be done to arrest, even in a degree, the physical,
mental, and moral decay, caused my heart to be sick and faint. God