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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4a
But he gave them what they lusted for, because they would not submit
to him.
Appetite has been indulged to the injury of health. Stimulating
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drinks have been used freely, which have confused the brain and
brought down man to the level of the brute creation. While intoxicated,
every degree of crime has been committed, and yet the perpetrators
have been excused in many instances, because they knew not what they
were doing. This does not lessen the guilt of the criminal. If by his own
hand he puts the glass to his lips, and deliberately takes that which he
knows will destroy his reasoning faculties, he becomes responsible for
all the injury he does while intoxicated, at the very moment he lets his
appetite control him, and he barters away his reasoning faculties for
intoxicating drinks. It was his own act which brought him even below
the brutes, and crimes committed when he is in a state of intoxication
should be punished as severely as though the person had all the power
of his reasoning faculties.
Nadab and Abihu, by drinking wine, beclouded their reasoning
faculties, and so lost their sense of sacred things, that they thought they
could as well offer common fire as sacred. God did not excuse them
because the brain was confused. Fire from his presence destroyed
them in their sin. Some look with horror upon men who have been
overcome with liquor, and are seen reeling and staggering in the street,
while at the same time they are gratifying their appetite for things
differing in their nature from spirituous liquor, but which injure the
health, affect the brain, and destroy their high sense of spiritual things.
The liquor-drinker has an appetite for strong drink which he gratifies,
while another has no appetite for intoxicating drinks to restrain, but he
desires some other hurtful indulgence, and does not practice self-denial
any more than the drunkard.
Those who do not control their appetites in eating are guilty of in-
temperance. In those cases where men lose all sense of their obligation
to God, their families, and to community, it is a slow process. They are
not changed from the kind husband and father at once. It takes time to
degrade them to beasts, where they become mere wrecks of human-
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ity. With many, their first error is in making a God of their appetite,
subsisting mostly on highly-seasoned animal food which produces a
feverish state of the system, especially if pork is used freely. The blood
becomes impure. The circulation is not equalized. Chills and fever