Indulgence of Appetite
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it might be and what God designed it should be, a lazar house; and the
present generation are feeble in mental, moral, and physical power. All
this misery has accumulated from generation to generation because
fallen man will break the law of God. Sins of the greatest magnitude
are committed through the indulgence of perverted appetite.
The taste created for the disgusting, filthy poison, tobacco, leads
to the desire for stronger stimulants; as liquor, which is taken on
one plea or another for some imaginary infirmity or to prevent some
possible disease. Thus an unnatural appetite is created for these hurtful
and exciting stimulants; and this appetite has strengthened until the
increase of intemperance in this generation is alarming. Beverage-
loving, liquor-drinking men may be seen everywhere. Their intellect
is enfeebled, their moral powers are weakened, their sensibilities are
benumbed, and the claims of God and heaven are not realized, eternal
things are not appreciated. The Bible declares that no drunkard shall
inherit the kingdom of God.
Tobacco and liquor stupefy and defile the user. But the evil does
not stop here. He transmits irritable tempers, polluted blood, enfee-
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bled intellects, and weak morals to his children, and renders himself
accountable for all the evil results that his wrong and dissipated course
of life brings upon his family and the community. The race is groaning
under a weight of accumulated woe, because of the sins of former gen-
erations. And yet with scarcely a thought or care, men and women of
the present generation indulge intemperance by surfeiting and drunk-
enness, and thereby leave, as a legacy for the next generation, disease,
enfeebled intellects, and polluted morals.
Intemperance of any kind is the worst sort of selfishness. Those
who truly fear God and keep His commandments look upon these
things in the light of reason and religion. How can any man or woman
keep the law of God, which requires man to love his neighbor as
himself, and indulge intemperate appetite, which benumbs the brain,
weakens the intellect, and fills the body with disease? Intemperance
inflames the passions and gives loose rein to lust. And reason and
conscience are blinded by the lower passions.
We inquire: What will the husband of Sister A do? Will he, like
Esau, sell his birthright for a mess of pottage? Will he sell his godlike
manhood to indulge a perverted taste which only brings unhappiness
and degradation? “The wages of sin is death.” Has not this brother the