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Physical Health and Noble Thinking, March 14
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from
fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.
1 Peter 2:11
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Many regard this text as a warning against licentiousness only; but it
has a broader meaning. It forbids every injurious gratification of appetite
or passion. Every perverted appetite becomes a warring lust. Appetite was
given us for a good purpose, not to become the minister of death by being
perverted, and thus degenerating into “lusts, which war against the soul.”
Peter’s admonition is a most direct and forcible warning against the use of
all stimulants and narcotics. These indulgences may well be classed among
the lusts that exert a pernicious influence upon moral character.
Let none who profess godliness regard with indifference the health of
the body, and flatter themselves that intemperance is no sin and will not
affect their spirituality. A close sympathy exists between the physical and
the moral nature. The standard of virtue is elevated or degraded by the
physical habits. Excessive eating of the best of food will produce a morbid
condition of the moral feelings. And if the food is not the most healthful,
the effects will be still more injurious. Any habit which does not promote
healthful action in the human system degrades the higher and nobler fac-
ulties....Indulgence of appetite strengthens the animal propensities, giving
them the ascendancy over the mental and spiritual powers.
The strength of the temptation to indulge appetite can be measured
only by the inexpressible anguish of our Redeemer in that long fast in the
wilderness. He knew that the indulgence of perverted appetite would so
deaden man’s perceptions that sacred things could not be discerned.... If
the power of indulged appetite was so strong upon the race, that, in order to
break its hold, the divine Son of God, in man’s behalf, had to endure a fast
of nearly six weeks, what a work is before the Christian! Yet, however great
the struggle, he may overcome. By the help of that divine power which
withstood the fiercest temptations that Satan could invent, he, too, may be
entirely successful in his warfare with evil, and at last may wear the victor’s
crown in the kingdom of God.
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