Basic HTML Version
Chapter 6—Flesh Meats and Stimulants
Dear Brother and Sister H,
I recollected your countenances as being among several that I
had seen who need a work accomplished for them before they can
be sanctified through the truth. You embraced the truth because you
saw it to be truth, but it has not yet taken hold of you. You have not
realized its sanctifying influence upon the life. The light has been
shining upon your pathway in regard to health reform and the duty
resting upon God’s people in these last days to exercise temperance
in all things. You, I saw, were among the number who would be
backward to see the light and correct your manner of eating, drinking,
and working. As the light of truth is received and followed out, it
will work an entire reformation in the life and character of all those
who are sanctified through it.
Your business is of a character that is not friendly to an advance
in the divine life, but is one that will hinder the growth of grace and
the knowledge of the truth. It has a tendency to lower, to debase
the man, to make him more animal in his propensities. The higher
powers of the mind are overpowered by the lower. The brutish part
of your nature governs the spiritual. Those who profess to be fitting
for translation should not become butchers.
Your family have partaken largely of flesh meats, and the animal
propensities have been strengthened, while the intellectual have been
[61]
weakened. We are composed of what we eat, and if we subsist largely
upon the flesh of dead animals we shall partake of their nature. You
have encouraged the grosser part of your organism, while the more
refined has been weakened. You have repeatedly said in defense
of your indulgence of meat eating: “However injurious it may be
to others, it does not injure me, for I have used it all my life.” But
you know not how well you might have been if you had abstained
from the use of flesh meats. As a family, you are far from being
free from disease. You have used the fat of animals, which God in
His word expressly forbids: “It shall be a perpetual statute for your
57