Conserving Life’s Energies
93
of God. Be peaceful, calm, and happy, and trust yourself in the work
and cause of God, feeling that you are now to soften, sweeten, ripen
up for heaven. God loves you. But, with your advanced age and your
strong peculiarities, you will certainly mar the work of God more than
you can help it.
You have simply to rest in the hands of God and feel that your
work to preach the truth is done. Have no further responsibility in this
direction. You can be free to bear your testimony to comfort yourself;
this is your privilege; but to bear any church labor in word or doctrine,
or to travel out among other churches to hold public meetings, God
has released you.—
Letter 2, 1872
.
Overstrained Ideas of Health Reform
Poor, half-decayed fruit and vegetables should never be placed
upon the table because it is a savings of a few pennies. This kind
of management is a loss, and the body that should be nourished as a
temple of the Holy Ghost and be fitted to do the very best kind of work
is neglected. Many speeches were made in regard to self-denial and
self-sacrifice that were wholly inappropriate and uncalled for.
Brother M was so reduced by poor food and by want of conve-
niences and proper, careful attention while absent from his family, that
he had no strength to withstand exposure and disease. He died a martyr
[128]
to misconceived, crooked ideas of what constitutes health reform and
self-denial. He always had little thought for his own convenience, and
was left too much to himself, to care for himself. He was willing to do
anything to save means. Such conscientious souls are the ones who
are hurt by these overstrained ideas of what constitutes health reform.
Sister R’s family have been injured by the ideas she has entertained
of health reform. Brother John has been a hard worker, and the food
taken into his stomach has not nourished him; it has not supplied the
wants of his system and has not made the best quality of blood. The
weakness from which he is now suffering is caused by a poverty of the
blood more than by any real disease.
Why will not men and women to whom God has given reasoning
powers exercise their reason? When they see their strength is failing,
why do they not investigate their habits and their diet, and change to a
different diet to see its effect? The sufferings that have been brought