Chapter 1
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The human family have been growing more and more self-
indulgent, until health has been most successfully sacrificed upon
the altar of lustful appetite. The inhabitants of the Old World were
intemperate in eating and drinking. They would have flesh meats,
although God had given them no permission to eat animal food. They
ate and drank to excess, and their depraved appetites knew no bounds.
They gave themselves up to abominable idolatry. They became violent,
and ferocious, and so corrupt that God could bear with them no longer.
Their cup of iniquity was full, and God cleansed the earth of its moral
pollution by a flood. As men multiplied upon the face of the earth
after the flood, they forgot God, and corrupted their ways before him.
Intemperance in every form increased to a great extent.
The Lord brought his people out of Egypt in a victorious manner.
He led them through the wilderness to prove them, and try them. He
repeatedly manifested his miraculous power in their deliverances from
their enemies. He promised to take them to himself, as his peculiar
treasure, if they would obey his voice, and keep his commandments.
He did not forbid them to eat the flesh of animals, but withheld it from
them in a great measure. He provided them food which was the most
healthful. He rained their bread from heaven, and gave them purest
water from the flinty rock. He made a covenant with them, if they
would obey him in all things, he would preserve them from disease.
But the Hebrews were not satisfied. They despised the food given
them from heaven, and wished themselves back in Egypt where they
could sit by the flesh-pots. They preferred slavery, and even death,
rather than to be deprived of meat. God, in his anger, gave them flesh
to gratify their lustful appetites, and great numbers of them died while
eating the meat for which they had lusted.
Nadab and Abihu were slain by the fire of God’s wrath for their in-
temperance in the use of wine. God would have his people understand
that they will be visited according to their obedience or transgressions.
Crime and disease have increased with every successive generation.
Intemperance in eating and drinking, and the indulgence of the baser
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passions, have benumbed the nobler faculties. Appetite, to an alarming
extent, has controlled reason.
The human family have indulged an increasing desire for rich food,
until it has become a fashion to crowd all the delicacies possible into
the stomach. Especially at parties of pleasure is the appetite indulged