116
Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4a
A reform in eating would be a saving of expense and labor. The
wants of a family can be easily supplied that is satisfied with plain,
wholesome diet. Rich food breaks down the healthy organs of body
and mind. And how many labor so very hard to accomplish this.
Children who eat improperly are often feeble, pale and dwarfed,
and are nervous, excitable and irritable. Everything noble is sacrificed
to the appetite, and the animal passions predominate. The lives of
many children from five to ten and fifteen years of age seem marked
with depravity. They possess knowledge of almost every vice. The
parents are, in a great degree, at fault in this matter, and to them will
be accredited the sins of their children which their improper course has
indirectly led them to commit. They tempt their children to indulge
their appetite by placing upon their tables flesh meats and other food
prepared with spices, which have a tendency to excite the animal
passions. By their example they learn their children intemperance
in eating. They have been indulged to eat almost any hour of the
day, which keeps the digestive organs constantly taxed. Mothers have
had but little time to instruct their children. Their precious time was
devoted to cooking various kinds of unwholesome food to place upon
their tables.
Many parents have permitted their children to be ruined while they
[133]
were trying to regulate their lives to fashion. If visitors are to come,
they wish to have them sit down to as good a table as they would find
among any of their circle of acquaintances. Much time and expense
are devoted to this object. For the sake of appearance, rich food is
prepared to suit the appetite, and even professed Christians make so
much parade that they call around them a class whose principal object
in visiting them is for the dainties they get to eat. Christians should
reform in this respect. While they should courteously entertain their
visitors, they should not be such slaves to fashion and appetite.
I was shown that more deaths have been caused by drug-taking than
from all other causes combined. If there was in the land one physician
in the place of thousands, a vast amount of premature mortality would
be prevented. Multitudes of physicians, and multitudes of drugs, have
cursed the inhabitants of the earth, and have carried thousands and
tens of thousands to untimely graves.
Indulging in eating too frequently, and in too large quantities, over-
taxes the digestive organs, and produces a feverish state of the system.