Proper Mental Food
245
them for an eternal life in heavenly society. We can find no more fit
name for them than “mental inebriates.”
Intemperate habits of reading exert a pernicious influence upon the
brain as surely as does intemperance in eating and drinking.
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The Remedy
The best way to prevent the growth of evil is to preoccupy the soil.
The greatest care and watchfulness is needed in cultivating the mind
and sowing therein the precious seeds of Bible truth. The Lord, in
His great mercy, has revealed to us in the Scriptures the rules of holy
living....
He has inspired holy men to record, for our benefit, instruction
concerning the dangers that beset the path, and how to escape them.
Those who obey His injunction to search the Scriptures will not be
ignorant of these things. Amid the perils of the last days, every member
of the church should understand the reasons of his hope and faith,—
reasons which are not difficult of comprehension. There is enough to
occupy the mind, if we would grow in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord Jesus Christ.—
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene,
123-126
. (1890.)
First Steps in Sin
A long preparatory process, unknown to the world, goes on in the
heart before the Christian commits open sin. The mind does not come
down at once from purity and holiness to depravity, corruption, and
crime. It takes time to degrade those formed in the image of God to
the brutal or the satanic. By beholding, we become changed. By the
indulgence of impure thoughts, man can so educate his mind that sin
which he once loathed will become pleasant to Him.—
Patriarchs and
Prophets, 459
.
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