Chapter 1
385
Because it is the fashion, in harmony with morbid appetite, rich
cake, pies, and puddings, and every hurtful thing, are crowded into
the stomach. The table must be loaded down with a variety, or the
depraved appetite cannot be satisfied. In the morning, these slaves to
appetite often have impure breath, and a furred tongue. They do not
enjoy health, and wonder why they suffer with pains, headaches, and
various ills. The cause has brought the sure result.
In order to preserve health, temperance in all things is necessary.
Temperance in labor, temperance in eating and drinking.
Many are so devoted to intemperance that they will not change
their course of indulging in gluttony under any considerations. They
would sooner sacrifice health, and die prematurely, than to restrain
the intemperate appetite. And there are many who are ignorant of
the relation their eating and drinking has to health. Could such be
enlightened, they might have moral courage to deny the appetite, and
eat more sparingly, and of that food alone which was healthful, and by
their own course of action save themselves a great amount of suffering.
Efforts should be made to preserve carefully the remaining strength
of the vital forces, by lifting off every overtasking burden. The stomach
may never fully recover health, but a proper course of diet will save
further debility, and many will recover more or less, unless they have
gone very far in gluttonous self-murder.
Those who permit themselves to become slaves to a morbid ap-
petite, often go still further, and debase themselves by indulging their
corrupt passions, which have become excited by intemperance in eat-
ing and in drinking. They give loose rein to their debasing passions,
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until health and intellect greatly suffer. The reasoning faculties are, in
a great measure, destroyed by evil habits.
I have wondered that the inhabitants of the earth were not de-
stroyed, like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have seen reason
enough for the present state of degeneracy and mortality in the world.
Blind passion controls reason, and every high consideration with many
is sacrificed to lust.
The first great evil was intemperance in eating and drinking. Men
and women have made themselves slaves to appetite.
Pork although one of the most common articles of diet, is one of
the most injurious. God did not prohibit the Hebrews from eating
swine’s flesh merely to show his authority, but because it was not a