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Eat for Strength, July 20
Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy
princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!
Ecclesiastes 10:17
.
The laws of health are to be obeyed. It is important that the digestive
organs shall not be overtaxed. There are many who keep the stomach con-
tinually at work. It has not opportunity to recruit its strength, and the result
must be digestive disorders.
There should be no eating between meals, and at least five hours should
be allowed to elapse between the meals. Indigestion is the result of food taken
into the stomach before the digestive organs have had time to dispose of the
foregoing meal....
Three meals are sufficient, and two meals are better than three. For the
past thirty years I have eaten only two meals a day. The dullness from which
people suffer is often caused by overeating, and by eating at irregular periods.
Dyspepsia brings despondency, and one suffering from this disease, though
he may profess to be a Christian, acts in an un-Christlike manner.
Some claim that the inclination to eat is sufficient guide. But one may
get into the habit of eating several times a day, yet this would not be best.
Such a habit would produce disease, because the digestive organs would be
overtaxed.
Practice health reform, and refuse to be turned aside from the right path.
Do not faint away, but make your will power bring your appetite into subjec-
tion to a true purpose....
God gave Adam charge of the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it,
and of the trees and herbs bearing seed, He said, “They shall be for meat”
(see
Genesis 1:29
;
3:18
). Afterward the eating of flesh meat was permitted as
one of the consequences of the fall. Before the flood, no provision was made
for the use of animal food....
Try going without flesh meat for six months, and see if a change for the
better does not take place. I ask you to do this at once. Let your imagination
be sanctified. Let your mind and conscience be awakened, your whole being
aroused. Guard yourself against giving yourself too much sympathy. Be
heroic. Be determined to overcome perverted appetite.—
Letter 208, July 20,
1905
, to a physician and his wife.
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