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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor
blood.” “Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be
of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings. Whatsoever soul it be
that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from
his people.”
You have flesh, but it is not good material. You are worse off
for this amount of flesh. If you should each come down to a more
spare diet, which would take from you twenty-five or thirty pounds
of your gross flesh, you would be much less liable to disease. The
eating of flesh meats has made a poor quality of blood and flesh.
Your systems are in a state of inflammation, prepared to take on
disease. You are liable to acute attacks of disease and to sudden
death because you do not possess the strength of constitution to rally
and resist disease. There will come a time when the strength and
health you have flattered yourself you possessed will prove to be
weakness. It is not the chief end of man to glorify his stomach. You
have animal wants to be supplied; but because of this necessity shall
man become all animal?
You have set for your children a table of unwholesome food,
cooked in an unhealthful manner. You have placed flesh meats
before them, and what is the result? Are they refined, intellectual,
obedient, conscientious, and religiously inclined? You know this is
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not the case, but entirely the contrary. Your manner of living has
strengthened the animal of your nature and weakened the spiritual.
You have transmitted to your children a miserable legacy, a depraved
nature rendered still more depraved by your gross habits of eating
and drinking. Your table has completed the work of making them
what they are. The sin lies at your door. You know that they are not
religiously inclined, that they will not submit to restraint, but are
inclined to disobedience and to disrespect your authority. Your eldest
son especially is corrupt, partaking to a great degree of the animal.
Scarcely a trace of the divine can be seen in his organism. You
have brought up your children to indulge their appetite when they
please and as they please. Your example has taught them that they
live to eat, that the gratification of appetite is about all that is worth
living for. There is a work for you to do, Brother H. You have been
like a man asleep or paralyzed. It is time that you make a mighty
effort to save the younger members of your family. The influence